The Arm of God (A Worm SI)
by Cthulujr
Summary: This is a story based on the Worm CYOA. It aims to answer the question of how to protect the world from itself, let alone the extra-dimensional creatures that would see it destroyed.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: I need a Compass.**

"Alright sir, your ticket will be $250."

I hid the grimace that comment would of normally caused. The price was ridiculous for a one-way flight, and I don't know why I expected anything less from this deplorable universe (although, to be fair, I did ask for a flight on almost no notice). I carefully withdrew my wallet from my jeans and slowly handed over the exact amount.

"Is cash alright?" I asked for no other reason than to continue pleasantries... I mean, cash is less common (especially in amounts larger than $100), but, realistically, the ticket agent has no real reason to suspect me of anything. To her, I am just an average, young male trying to board a plane. My face has a slight smile to indicate that I am no threat, my stance is relaxed, and I just try and ease my way through the conversation. I also suspect the loss of documents from Endbringer attacks leaves businesses very relaxed in these areas.

Then again, I was playing the role of a minor. How else do you explain that you were born 14 years ago but in actuality have 18 years to your name? Yes, excuse me ma'am? My birth appears to be the result of temporal desynchronization. Would you be willing to ignore that?

I certainly wasn't going to complain though. If minors managed to buy tickets and fly alone in post-9/11 America, it would logically be much easier here. 9/11 never occurred in the wormverse, therefore airport paranoia was thankfully nigh-nonexistent. After all, why fear the middle-eastern man next to you when there were 3 perfectly hateable eldritch abominations mucking everything up?

The ticket agent-unknowing and uncaring of my inner thoughts-gave me one of those smiles as my boarding pass was processed. It was one of those smiles where both members of the conversation know the real reasoning behind her gesture, that she succeeded in her job of getting my money. Regardless of her motivations, happiness can be infectious, and I still get easy transportation, so we both ended smiling in the end. Trade benefits all, except when it doesn't.

"Of course sir. Your flight leaves in two hours."

I expected a not-so-subtle suggestion to visit one of the stores nearby, but none coming was quite the pleasant surprise. I finished our exchange and meandered my way over to the waiting area and... waited... and waited. I'm pretty sure it had been 30 seconds to everyone else around me, but my perceptions of time are slightly skewed and I was already bored. I pulled out a phone-shamelessly stolen from an electronics store on the way here-and made good use of the free Wi-Fi offered. The internet here was more or less the same as where I was born. A vast, uncontrolled mess of chaos that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Unfortunately, it seemed Reddit did not exist. However, Wikipedia did exist here, and I made use of my time by reading anything interesting, then following the related pages and continuing the cycle. That cycle was broken by finding the page for parahumans. It was a small reminder of the differences here, a reminder that I really was here.

I still didn't really have a plan for anything. I had only arrived in this universe a few hours ago. I awoke on my back in an empty alleyway, staring into the sky. At once, I was almost overwhelmed by the excess visual and aural input. I was hearing things far away as if they were close, and seeing details on far-away objects as if they were next to my eyes. My vision was mediocre at best previously, so I spent a large chunk of my first few minutes staring at the roof and clouds in front of my face before even considering to get up from my prone position.

Eventually, I did manage to drop down to a 'simply-whelmed' state and climb my way to a standing position. The pores in the bricks across from my eyes danced out to my vision as large as caverns and I tried focusing outward. It worked, to my satisfaction, when I no longer felt like a jeweler inspecting a brick. Change... had happened. I felt so much more alive. I felt so much more energetic than I had ever felt before. I felt like a could run a marathon, like I could move a mountain with my hands, like I was just… so much more.

Those positives became promptly crushed under the realization that I was in a city I had never seen before. Sheer, primal panic flooded through my nervous system like a forest fire burning away the rationality of my mind.

The rate of most of my biological functions increased as the logical answers that could possibly explain my situation grew scarcer and scarcer. My breathing grew labored as I stumbled towards the end of the alley I had awoken in. Even in my fear, it was clear to me my thoughts were racing along, faster than ever before. The leading two theories to explain my situation were either I was kidnapped for no reason, or, more reasonably, I had decided to go out of state to partake in an acid trip. I was offered once by a good friend, and it seemed like the most probable cause of my displacement.

I tripped in my haste to make an exit, my legs moving far faster than I was used to. I ended up awkwardly pushing my right hand towards the nearest wall in an attempt to grab the brick while my left went under my chest to absorb the impact. The left would never complete its task because, as my third shock of the hour, my right hand went clean through the brick to ungracefully stop my descent towards the ground.

Chips of brick and mortar were spat over my body while I staggered into a standing position once more. I tuned out the mass of cars my ears were picking up while I just stared at my hand, or more accurately the forearm not currently imbedded in the wall.

Change had indeed happened. Normal people do not hear or see this well, nor do they pass through hardened clay with the resistance of air. This much was obvious. I absentmindedly pried my arm free of its makeshift cast while trying to identify the time of the change. I remembered the previous few days, but the night before this one was hazy and unclear to me.

My breathing grew more normal as I looked at the hole made into the wall not 10 seconds ago. A jagged messed of cracked and crushed brick twice the width of my arm left an opening into the empty room beyond. The low light levels inside did nothing to impede my visual senses. Indeed, as I glanced over the entire face of the building with my eyes to view the age degeneration the unfortunate building had undergone, it seemed no one had lived here in a long, long time.

Curiosity burned within me as I pressed my palm to the wall in front of me. I pushed against the wall with what I felt was a solid effort on my end. The result was the collapse of any brick my hand was touching at the time, all components flung into the opposite wall by an impossibly-strong force. A gap the size of a basketball greeted me and my shocked face.

I could not believe what I had just done, giving only a small, quiet whistle at the scene. I held my hands in front of my face for a moment before deciding to wipe them off on my jeans and place them inside my pockets. This course of action was how I discovered the wallet inside my left pocket. A simple, brown wallet greeted me. With nothing but a scant $100 inside, I placed it inside its previous home once more. While I didn't have my phone to call anymore, at least I had some money. I could probably find a payphone somewhere nearby and call a friend. Then, maybe I could figure out why nothing made sense right now.

With that fantastic plan at the forefront of my mind, I set off. Carefully placing my feet on the ground, I was greatly relieved that the action of walking was not beyond me. When not flailing around like a 6 year old that ate an entire box of Lucky Charms, walking felt mostly normal.

I managed to make it to the end of the alley without further issue. At least, without issue in the physical sense. Mentally, I was confused once again. The memory of me from the moment I awoke was so clear; I had no words to describe the details in my head.

Human memories are malleable, and notoriously unreliable. As amazing as the human brain is, it intentionally forgets an immense amount of information just to stay sane. We only remember key factors in memories, never the small, unimportant details. For instance, I could describe to you a memory of me as a child a decade ago, sitting on my father's shoulders at a zoo. I could not tell you what we saw specifically, or what we did that day. I can only assume. If I told you a memory that happened the week before, where I conversed with a friend about economics, I could successfully recall most of the major topics, the place we spoke, and the time. However, even something so recent lacks the finer details like: air temperature, the color of the shirt I was wearing, or how many people we passed by in our walk.

This was different. I could close my eyes and tell you the number of cracks on each of the walls. I could tell you each of the sounds I heard on every single step that carried me out of the alleyway. To put it mildly, it was intense.

I scoped out my exit using my eyes and ears. There was no one on the small side street I was exiting into, but I could hear people and cars a street or two towards my right and further away towards my left. Distance was somewhat hard to judge with the recent recalibration of my ears, but direction was fairly easy.

My eyes took in everything in an instant, but they honed in specifically on an overturned newspaper several hundred feet down the left of the street, right on the corner. It was dirty, torn in half, wet, unassuming, and irrelevant as a physical object, but it was the information on it that stood out to me. In big letters, clear as crystal to me, read the lines,

"Brockton Bay," and, "April 2nd, 2011."

The familiar feeling of anxiety rose within me as I responded to the new information as best as I could, mainly by making a 180 degree turn and walking in the opposite direction. While chanting nope in my head the entire time, I walked faster in my haste to leave the area. I moved as fast as I dared to without tripping, progressively accelerating until I ended up running the entire length of the street in only a few seconds. I slowed down and turned the corner to an unfamiliar road. I was lost in both time and space. Despair was crushed and buried just like the superhuman feat I had performed not 3 seconds ago.

I followed the road as traffic increased up ahead, sticking to the very edges of the sidewalk. I could only deny the reality I was being subjected to. I had never been able to think so fast in my life, but now dozens of theories were formed, discarded, and catalogued inside my head.

Insanity, that is what this was. The chance of me being displaced to an entirely-different set of cosmos was infinitely high, except, paradoxally, it was also 100%. If you subscribed to the idea of an infinite multiverse, which I did not necessarily disagree with, then everything must occur an infinite number of times. The concept is not alien to me, but it is difficult to comprehend. It is similar to the area under a curve. How can an infinite number of rectangles fit into a finite space? My mind may be faster now, but it is no less boggled by the thought.

My memory was unbelievable perfect now, but the recent 30 minutes or so to me give no additional useful information. The facts before me are I am in a place previously thought to be inaccessible to my person. Even if it was capable of being travelled to, who in the right frame of mind would want anything to do with this apocalyptic world. Why me? Isn't that always the question?

My anger at the unfairness of my situation resulted in an impulsive kick to a soda can lying in my path. The result was a can compressed as far as possible onto the brick wall next to me. I think it may have even partially imbedded itself into the wall, given that gravity did not seem to apply to it. I nervously turned my head to look around. Almost no one was walking near me, and none were looking in my direction. I also doubted someone in one of the passing cars had to time to see anything unusual either. I let out a breath of relief and continued me walk towards an unknown destination. That was stupid of me.

I had powers now. That much was obvious. I needed to not be careless. I recalled everything that had happened up until now. I was stronger, faster, had improved senses, and a faster thought speed. My limits were unknown to me, and it was imperative for me to test the boundaries as soon as I found a secluded place nearby.

Of course, these recent revelations brought with them even more questions. The most obvious being how did I get here? I had three leading ideas: a ROB, Cauldron, or just sheer misfortune. Bad luck was a possibility, but the existence of superpowers somewhat negated that theory. Then again, the previous night was not recallable to me, and it was entirely possible I triggered then. Cauldron, ironically, seemed the least likely catalyst for my arrival. If they were, I'd probably be strapped to a table somewhere, being pumped for information that could save the world.

I turned the corner to the street, enjoying the speed that my thoughts raced past. So many more possibilities could be considered to me now. The fact that an extradimensional door wasn't opening to me when I woke up meant good odds that precognition either is or was actively blocked on me. I had no way of telling whether that effect only applied to my entry or my very person, but I suppose not seeing Contessa within a week would validate that theory.

The final option was of course a ROB. The end result didn't really matter though. Given no instructions, whether I was put here by Q, The Tooth Fairy, or the Ghost of Christmas Past had no relevance to my situation without direct interaction. I would try my damned hardest to make my life my own.

More possibilities were regarded and disregarded before the sight of a image I was previously accustomed to shone in the forefront of my mind, the Worm CYOA. The information contained within definitely matched the chain of events so far, but the specifics were beyond me. I could have solely the Alexandria power set. I could live an easy ten years and return safely. Of course, I could also have every possible complication. That thought was simply not worth the effort of worrying about because, if it was true, I was going to have a much shorter life expectancy than anticipated anyway.

Terrifying implications do not help the terror blossoming in my heart, but they must be ignored for now. I was unaware of the exact time, but it must have been early morning given the sun's position in the sky. That same celestial body let me know I was travelling north, which was fine with me. As long as I stuck towards a particular direction that wasn't east, I would eventually get out of this city, and that was certainly the plan.

Most notions were considered. I could stay, fighting crime valiantly in this city. I could interject myself into everyone's lives and tell them their problems like a voluntary therapist. Or… I could let them do their own thing and go do my own. That sounded like the best idea to me. Fighting crime had several issues that made the concept unfavorable to me. I simply was not heroic, and I didn't want to be heroic. That does not mean I am malevolent in any way (I certainly wouldn't consider myself as such), but me and the Protectorate have remarkable different definitions of heroics.

The main difference is the law-abiding aspect of the job. Laws are merely social contracts people uphold. Some are obviously agreeable with me, such as don't murder and don't put cigarettes in your kid's Lunchable box, but others I disagree with. The conflict of interest that is present decreases the merit of the action in my eyes. If I were to, say, come across someone smoking cannabis, I would be legally obligated to arrest them if I signed up with the Protectorate. The problem is I don't agree with that law in the first place, so I either fail myself or fail my employer.

The second issue I have with the Protectorate is its underhanded function as just a part of a Cauldron plot. Call me conceited, but if I work with, not for, Cauldron, it won't be on anything less than my own terms.

The final issue is the pointlessness. I would essentially be forcing compliance with no regard to the factors that set up the situation. To clarify, why waste my time arresting people for stealing when I can devote my energy towards solving the problem of why they're poor in the first place. The entire system as is only perpetuates the conflict and suffering of the nation and world as a whole. The unwritten rules are a response to the hopelessness plaguing the people here. Its only purpose, as I see it, is to marginalize the suffering of men and women fighting each other, so that they may ultimately suffer via Endbringer instead. It is the subsistence trap of the modern era. The situation sucks, but it's no one's fault specifically, it's just a necessity when your species is on the backburner. If I was going to do anything good with my abilities, it would start with the Endbringers.

The limit of my involvement with this city would be a letter to some individuals at best. It's hard to care in the scope of the entirety. Why should I care for the relatively minor tyrannies forced onto the people here when a genocidal space whale threatens the population of thousands of Earths and trillions of people? 15,000 children died of starvation every day in my home universe. I wouldn't doubt that number was higher here, so what difference would a few more make, other than making me feel like a better person?

My internal monologue was put on hold as I walked into the nicer area of town. I had no memory of specific streets to follow, but surely this area must of been the Boardwalk. It was pristine compared to the area I awoke in. The people in it walked differently, more confident of themselves, and I figured their lives were much easier with the material wealth they owned in comparison to the poorer parts of the city. Most importantly, they were all just people. They all lived unique lives, with unique hopes and dreams, and all of them were equally faceless to one another. The concept itself was called sonder, and it certainly put into perspective that everyone considers themselves more important than someone else.

I was not here to people watch all day, though I could likely multitask quite well, but, rather, look for some specific locations that could help me. I walked with the crowd, blending in until I found what I was looking for after a few minutes of travelling and asking several shop vendors. The Boardwalk was the rich, touristy area of the city, and tourists need information to keep the exchange of cash to services flowing. Though I had never been here specifically before, almost all major cities have public maps. Given my current lack of a phone and, consequently, GPS, I was looking for The Brockton Bay Information Center. I finally found the building near a chain of stores I didn't recognize and entered. A simple request while posing as a tourist, and I came out with a free map and complimentary brochure of popular destinations that were entirely useless to me. I wanted out as soon as possible.

The map was what all that I really wanted, and now I could go find an area with as few people within as possible to perform some experiments with my abilities. Looking over the chart between my hands, I decided that the Boat Graveyard was the best place to practice abnormal activities. I memorized the layout before me exactly before tossing the paper into the nearest waste disposal bin and setting off once more.

I ended up taking in the sights of the city along the way. It was reminiscent of the last time I travelled to Los Angeles. By all accounts, it was just a normal city that would not be out of place in my universe. Reality sunk in when I walked by the bay. There, overlooking the city, was unmistakably the Protectorate Headquarters. Despite being a repurposed oil platform, the structure was quite impressive visually. It was unintentionally even more impressive to my eyes as, regardless of its distance away, I could make out the streamlined efficiency of its construction. A beautiful work of architecture that was likely made to inspire hope in the city's inhabitants. I suspected it also succeeded in hiding the true state of just how fragile this society was. Something to change in the future…

The map within my head proved eternally helpful as I navigated my way north in the city. My improved senses tracked everyone in an impressively-sized sphere around me, which I used to my advantage once the number of pedestrians thinned out. I avoided the majority of the people nearby, and eventually found my way to the south end of the Boat Graveyard.

I stood on a hill overlooking this part of the bay. I glanced at the several dozen derelict ships sitting in the water, having lost their battle against time long ago, and decided to make my way deeper into the mass of abandoned steel. I had been filtering out heartbeats from my awareness, but even when specifically looking for them it only revealed that there was no one around. That might be different further along the shore, but here I could be safe as long as I played it smart.

Most of the ships were out a hundred feet or so into the water, but there were a few much closer to the shore. I spotted one that had a tenth or so of its length stationed on dry land. It was a typical container ship, if absolutely dwarfing me in both volume and mass. A metal skyscraper on its side, perfect for me. I took off my shoes and socks, placed them on the ground, and moved to the end of the angled vessel to begin testing.

It was obvious that I was substantially stronger than I was previously, and, by proxy, most assuredly more durable. I placed my left palm flat against the hull of the ship, and attempted to grip the material by closing my fist. Even after witnessing it previously, there was no small amount of surprise when the steel under my hand crumpled like paper to conform to the shape of my fist. The end result was a hand imprint in the sheet with tearing to compensate for the pulling of the steel. I placed my right hand onto the hull to counterbalance my left while it pulled with all its might. There was a screech of tortured metal as a strip the size of my body was removed from the hull.

I took the piece and played with it while I wandered inside the ship. I twisted the metal into all kinds of shapes with the same resistance as styrofoam until the ductility of the steel failed and it snapped. I continued walking through the ship, damaging areas as I saw fit. It was kind of fun, like playdoh or clay, and using steel made me feel much manlier about the collateral damage I was causing.

The low light levels didn't bother me inside the hull, though I did stop my journey when I found a flooded section not to far from my makeshift entrance. I decided to test out the second aspect of my new abilities, increased speed. I eyed the wall to my left and decided to throw a punch at it as fast as I could manage. Given the feats I had just performed, probability was on my side that my skin would win out. That theory was proven correct when my fist broke clean through the wall with only a mild bulging in the area surrounding my forearm. A visible pressure wave erupted from my hand as water streamed in through the new hole. I watched the air hit my ears and a crack echoed like a gunshot throughout the metal walls of the ship. I cringed involuntarily as the sound reverberated loudly through the vessel.

Right, given the correlation of information between my powers and their most likely source, it would be a safe assumption that I should have a way of accelerating without the negative effects of physics affecting me. Described as a skintight force field that was apparently not active by default, I only needed to figure out how to use it. I stepped away from the leaking hole and started punching the open air.

"Activate, start, protect," I switched to flicking my index finger at supersonic speeds after the entire ship started vibrating from the shock waves, "abra cadabra, open sesame, flame on, this isn't even my final form, o' lord of darkness grant me strength…" Absolutely no variations occurred from my endeavors.

I tried halting the bubbling frustration within me. How skewed my perspective was, that I was so much more than I was and still complaining of not being even better. I took a deep breath and just thought. I racked my brain for details on what exactly the specific of the field was, but the facts just weren't there. All I could remember was that certain physical laws were ignored. Even if my memory was now perfect, it couldn't fill in the gaps from before. Just like resizing a 640x480 image into a 3000x3000 frame, the details just aren't there to accommodate the new space.

I had a few different ideas I could try, but the best one to attempt at this moment was meditation. I closed my eyes and looked within myself. I had not tried using my improved senses on my own body since awakening this morning, and I was not expecting the result. When passing by random citizens in the streets earlier, I could make out everything obvious about their biology on a macro scale. Their heart beats, breathing rates, even the blood flow into different areas could be identified, but I never realized how much different I was. I focused on listening to my own bundle of flesh sustain itself. It was… muted compared to everyone else… so much quieter. That was not necessarily a negative thing though. There was something there, just beyond the expanse of my senses.

I felt _it_. Like a silk blanket bundled around me, I knew of it on a higher level than perhaps I even knew myself. I found the field and drew it around me, feeling its protective embrace. My eyes snapped open and I clenched a fist. I could feel the difference. I felt smoother, and likely was given the ability to ignore air's density. I pushed my arm forward as fast as I could. There was no harsh crack to greet me this time, and a smile found its way onto my face from the success. I attempted moving my entire body next. Zipping through the entire length of the ship in under a second, I exited the boat to perform my final test for now. Pleased that my clothes didn't turn into char cloth over my body, I crouched down and grabbed two fistfuls of the steel wall and heaved.

I forced the 'blanket' to cover the entirety of the cargo ship as I pulled. I had not lifted anything even remotely heavy since this morning, but I gave it my all regardless, expecting to both be able to move the ship and not move it. The ship groaned and creaked, but gained momentum vertically as I managed to lift it 3 or 4 feet in the air and level it out. Water splashed down the sides further down until finally the boat was wholly, if barely, out of the water, the entirety of its weight held up by my hands and not collapsing in on itself. For the mass discrepancy present between me and the ship, the physical strain was less than I was expecting. I could probably have lifted another ten at least, though I certainly wasn't going to set any speed records while doing so.

I slowly lowered the boat back into its rightful place in the water and took a step back, feeling like I had just won the lottery (which I suppose I had, in a way). The test was successful. I had just moved a container ship that most likely weighed in excess of 7 figures pound wise. The last test I wanted to perform was an attempt at flight, but that would have to wait. Doing so here would only attract unwanted attention.

I placed my shoes back on and headed back into the city. I needed directions to the nearest airport so I could finally leave the area. Several ideas of how to due so came to me, but there was one that was the most efficient, if morally detestable. I kept the field over my body and _moved_, scoping out the city for an store that sold cellphones. I found one after a rather extensive search of the city. A large mall sat in its own area, and I had entered to further extend my search. Inside, there was a small shop selling the latest brand of phones. I dashed past the open doors, and scoped out the selection. The few people inside stood still like statues around me as I walked passed them, and I don't even think they would feel a gust of wind from my passing.

The wireless saviors finally found, I looked over my options. I selected a random Samsung off the shelf given that it was the only brand I actually recognized. The rest I had never even heard of, and I didn't feel like learning the specifics of the timeline's divergence quite yet, so familiarity would win out here. I flat out took the box with me, along with a few dollars from every open register in the entire building. So long as I remained in motion, the only things that were going to notice me in any detail were high speed cameras or other parahumans, and the odds of either here were low.

I opened the box and dumped my trash into a trashcan on the other side of the mall. A problem I had not considered soon became obvious. The phone was not charged in the box. I spent a few minutes looking for a secluded outlet before realization struck me as I walked by a vending machine. I quickly moved the machine and plugged in my new phone before heading to the food court.

A great joy filled my heart as I saw that there was a Dairy Queen/Orange Julius combo here. Without hesitation I strolled up to the line at a normal human walking pace and impatiently waited my turn. A young man that looked to be in his mid 20s greeted me when my turn arrived,

"Hi. What can I get you today?"

Not even the threat of a societal collapse could keep the smile off my face,

"A medium-sized oreo blizzard my good man." My exuberance seemed to improve his mood as well considering he gave a genuine smile back.

"Alright sir, that'll be $6.30." My hand was already holding a ten by the time he finished, and he took it from me to complete our exchange. I was ecstatic that the price was roughly the same even here. Ice cream surmounts space and time once more.

Three minutes later, and I was the owner of the world's newest Oreo Blizzard. I chilled out on a nearby table and just watched all the people go by. Some were as excited as I was, most were neutral, and a few looked like someone pissed in their Cheerios this morning, but, overall, everyone was doing great. I made the best use of inhuman speed possible by finishing my blizzard in under 5 minutes. I also discovered first hand that brain freezes did not affect me, and I could taste the ice cream fully without my tongue going numb. I took back anything negative I might of said in a parallel universe, this is awesome.

Still, all good things must come to an end. I let out a content sigh as I tossed my empty cup of creamy goodness into the garbage bin. I strolled around the mall, taking in the sights for the next half hour or so, comparing products and goods of the two universes. I then walked at a normal pace into the nearest restroom, which was thankfully empty, and dashed back out at full speed. Retrieving my new phone, I was pleased to see it had almost 50% of it's battery filled.

Making use of the free Wi-Fi at one of the stores, I used the map application already installed to memorize the route to the nearest airport some 50 miles away. I walked into one of the clothing stores, before heading to a corner empty of people and cameras and accelerating one final time.

With the layout memorized, I cleared the city limits in only a few seconds before heading in a straight line off of the highway. At the speed I was moving, I could clear the entire distance in under a minute easily and unnoticed to almost everything. I was ever grateful for the pervasive field shielding me and the environment by proxy. Without it, my clothes would ignite off me body, air around me would undergo nuclear fission, and I would likely fly after outpacing gravity relative to the Earth's curvature. The sheer collateral damage of me passing through an area would be as devastating as any Endbringer attack. How humbling a thought, that thousands could die from a second of me losing control…

Eventually, I made it to the airport without incident, and that leaves me to the present, playing flash games on my new phone.

Luckily, I only had to wait 15 minutes or so, otherwise I think I would have tried walking myself, before my flight's boarding began. The affair was simple, short, and exactly the same as the last time I boarded an aircraft. I ended up in a seat near the back, and next to me was an older gentlemen reading a book with no one next to him.

An obese man walked down the aisle just before boarding ended, and I felt a twinge of fear not heard of for hours. To the relief of both me and my unnamed compatriot in the seat over, the large man ended up in the seat in front of us. My heart went out to the brave man next to the obese individual, who, when his arm rest became absorbed by a fat roll, gave the large man a single raised eyebrow as if to say,

"Really dude?"

The fat man-to his credit-had the decency to look sheepish at the spectacle. He and his disgruntled partner pulled out their own electronic devices and went off into their own worlds while I pulled out my phone and spent some time looking over all the settings. All my effort this morning finally paid off when the aircraft advanced forward, gaining speed until we left the ground. I spent the first hour checking all the phone's functions several times and playing the games already installed at the airport. I was growing bored fast of these though, and I still had 5 hours to go.

Another gentleman to our left had a laptop open (presumably his). He was watching footage of some kind of disaster relief going on, but it was he source of which drew my curiosity when I saw the headline near the bottom.

"Disaster Relief Continues in Canberra, Australia"

I turned off my phone, attention focused solely on the screen. Scenes of devastation were displayed prominently, but the images depicted were likely the more viewer-friendly ones. After all, showing dead heroes is a great way to discourage Protectorate employment. I used my magnified hearing to listen in through the man's ear buds. Interviews with survivors were being conducted, along with the facts about how the city is looking to recover well in the future. Hah, if only they knew.

My passenger (and not of the space whale variety) was more observant than I originally thought because he noticed me watching the laptop and decided to give his own two cents,

"They always say things are looking up when they're not, and that things are ending when they're stable.

I turned my attention from the screen to address him,

"It'd be a lot easier if there weren't any world ending threats."

He gave me a sad, humorless smile in return.

"Before the Endbringers we lived in fear of the Soviets, and before them my father lived in fear of the Nazis. We always have something to fear."

I could see the traces of nostalgia dancing in his eyes as he was most likely remembering that occurred to him years ago.

"True, " I gave him a conceding nod, "but we will always have men to fight for the protection of everyone else."

He shared a little more of his life story with me then,

"I remember the draft back 40 years ago. I was still in high school then, but I remember my older brother going off in defense of the country. I remember him giving me a pat on the shoulder and telling me, 'Thomas, I need to do this. This is what I was meant for.' That was the last time I saw him, and I always want to believe he died happily so I could live freely. News like that makes feel like people like my brother died for nothing." His voiced was chocked with emotion as he pointed to the oblivious man across the aisle watching the news.

Tears formed in his eyes as he wiped them with his sleeve. He sniffled a few times before recovering rapidly and chuckling slightly.

"Sorry. Sometimes I forget people don't want to hear the ramblings of an old man's life."

"Don't feel bad sir, I'm sure someone will stop them eventually." I didn't even have to fake cheer. I would not stop until the cores of the Endbringers were crushed between my hands.

"People like your brother help inspire others. I feel inspired just listening to the strength of character people like him have." Wasn't that the truth? I don't know if I had it in me to sacrifice myself like that.

He gave me a much happier smile in return.

"Thank you son, but where are my manners? Thomas Powell at your service." He held out his right hand to me, which I quickly and very carefully reciprocated.

"Just Zack."

We settled into a comfortable silence while I eavesdropped on the news broadcast. We spoke only a few more times that flight. I learned Thomas was heading out to California to visit his son, and I told him I was just going home on vacation. Though we did part eventually, his presence did help ease the boredom of the flight. We finally arrived at the San Diego International Airport a few hours later.

I exited the plane, said my goodbye, and left without another thought. I imagine we would both become each other's faceless person within the hour. I pulled up the map application of my nearly-dead phone and set the coordinates of my hometown. Unexpectedly, they did not show up. Indeed, a rather large radius was unfamiliar to me here. I finally decided to search for something familiar instead. I left the airport and moved at high speeds around the area. It was unrecognizable to me, even though I had been here before.

I ended up settling for a nearby city that did show up only 20 minutes from my home. That city was only 70 minutes away from the airport by car, which would equate to roughly one or two minutes by foot.

I followed the route memorized in my head for the short time I needed to. I added an additional minute or so on my travelling time by sticking off the sides of the main freeway to minimize my risks of being spotted, but I felt it was worth the few seconds it took.

The layout of the street were really the only thing I recognized in the city. What was once a bustling center of shops and entertainment venues was now just a small town off the main freeway.

I followed the roads I had crossed the past decade and still nearly missed my hometown. I zipped past the off ramp of the freeway to find my hometown…. It was nothing like I remember. A city of several hundred thousand reduced to nothing more than a gas station and a few shops for people passing by.

I ran faster than I had been travelling previously (not being tired was pretty nice) and made it to where my house would be in my home dimension…. Nothing, there was nothing there. I walked passed the side street I had travelled hundreds of times in the past only to find there was no street that should have been there. Nothing more than a simple wall next to the road was there.

Frustration built inside of me as I refused to accept the reality of the situation. I hopped over the wall with no difficulty to find nothing more than dirt. The entire area was nothing more than an empty lot. I strode forward slowly until I reached the area I had lived in for over ten years. I fell to my knees, not wanting to believe this was true. I picked up a rock in my anger and tossed it in front of me. The resulting impact left created a tsunami of dirt that flew forward rapidly. The rock melted to slag as it left my hand, but still managed to create an impact creator the size of several semi trucks.

I laid on my back, utterly drained in a way that wasn't physical in the slightest.

"I'm home," I quietly whispered to no one in particular. I watched the sun move ever so slowly past the sky, my eyes never bothered telling me they hurt, nor did my vision degrade after several minutes, so I assume it was fine to watch the sunspots. I heard nothing but the cars a mile down the road, driving on the freeway. I was already bored….

I sighed…. I take back anything I might have previously took back; this universe sucks.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: I need a world that makes sense.**

It has been only been 4 days since I have arrived in this horrible simulation of cruelty. The first night and second day were spent almost entirely in downtown San Diego. There, I partook in multiple forms of entertainment: Broadway shows, Movies, etc. There were more than enough activities to make any hedonist proud. In fact, I think any licensed psychologist would say that it was my way of dealing with the loneliness I found myself suddenly exposed to.

It was probably beneficial doing so in an area I was mostly familiar with. The downtown area had been constructed before the timeline divergence of this universe, or at least the majority had, and the sights I had seen before were nice to see once more. I did notice the Protectorate building though. It sat upon the old location of Petco Park, gleaming in the sunlight and standing tall for everyone to see. It was in some ways more impressive than the Brockton Bay Protectorate headquarters. This one was much larger, and, though I'm not a paid architect, it certainly looked more expensive. It lacked a future technology aspect to it however, and, in the end, I would settle for merely calling it 'different.'

The city around the building is just as active as I remember it. There are dozens of small family shops to visit. There are all types of sights to see and enjoy. I ended up walking along the beach when a nostalgic fit overtook me. Extradimensional parasites in people or not, the Pacific ocean is still really fucking cold to anyone who can't tank an intercontinental ballistic missile directly or has to worry about silly things like body temperature. It has been a peaceful few days. It's surprising actually; either I fail entirely at detecting crime in progress, or I just haven't stayed long enough. I'm inclined to believe it's a mixture of both.

I've essentially limited my hearing on purpose now as a result. The sounds of the city are too confusing when applied all at once. For instance, I rushed to the scene of gunfire I heard on the other side of the city, only to realize I had wasted my time when I saw nothing more than a family watching an action movie. It seems silly in hindsight, given Hollywood's unrealistic gun sounds, but there are other noises in media too similar to differentiate. Secondly, I didn't feel like hearing several dozen couples going at it at once. I believe the final straw was when I thought I heard a woman being raped, only to find that someone was watching porn without headphones on, and I had the unfortunate sensitivity to hear that down the street.

My third day involved much of the same activities, but that was also the day I learned how to fly. I ended up running my way into the desert to start. I needed to learn how to move in three dimensions if I was going to take the next step in doing anything in this world. I knew of several places nearby, but the millions of empty acres that surrounded the 15 freeway were the best locations I had in mind.

I picked a fairly random spot, running until I was sure no passerbys would see me from the road, given that I was outside the visual range of normal humans. From there, it was the time for mad science, or-if it's more towards your preference-random experimentation. I tried jumping at various heights to start. Gravity, however, seemed inclined to continue accelerating me at its constant 9.8 meters per second. I eventually settled into a squat before contracting my quadriceps as fast as I could to perform a powerful jump. The ground cracked and shattered around me like it was struck by the fist of an angry god as I gained increasing altitude. I eventually ended up passing the initial cloud layer before my ascent slowed until I hit the moment of zero momentum. At that point in time, I saw just how small the land below me looked, and realized with a primal sort of fear just how high up I was.

I began falling and falling fast. I began moving until I was going down just as fast as I went up, before my brain made the connection that the field around me that helpful ignored the pesky limitations of physics also ignored those minor things that kept me from speeding up. This meant that gravity could accelerate me as fast as it wanted with no regard for outdated concepts such as terminal velocity or the relationship between the cross sectional area of a mass and air resistance.

I fell for less than a minute. The first 30 seconds were spent futilely trying every combination that came to me to overcome gravity's pull. The next 15 were spent weighing the cost of drawing the field in or not. I realized doing so now my very well cause attention to be drawn towards me unduly, and so chose to trust in my durability and weigh it out. The final seconds of my fall were spent coming to peace with my life so far.

My life is in my powers. If they fail, there is almost no question I will die. The concept of mortality is nothing new to anyone. I had my first higher understanding of it when I stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon. With only a few inches separating me from a half-mile drop, I could have easily ended my life in a single step. There is a certain empowering aspect to realizing that, no, I like living and would very much like to continue doing so.

This was familiar. I'd rather not die, though it wasn't so much for myself. I'd die, yes, and not experience the benefits of living. Though, conversely, life's negatives would also not be present. However, my death would result in the deaths of many, many people who could easily have not died if I managed to fix things. Even the selfish aspect of dying wasn't about me necessarily as a person, but rather as a legacy I could have built.

All of this introspection was fortunately for naught as my body slammed feet first into the earth of the Earth below me. My plan of landing feet first, absorbing the shock by rolling diagonally forwards, and landing upright to the applause and score of 10 completely failed. My velocity proved too high when my feet managed to imbed themselves into the ground, but my torso continued the plan my legs abandoned and still fell forward. I ended up smacking my face into the ground with enough force to shake the entire area around me slightly. I pushed my hands into the ground to remove my legs-buried to the knees-from the ground. I wiped the excess dirt from my face and laughed. I was alive at least….

My clothes were completely covered in dirt, and I was standing in a shallow impact crater around a dozen meters wide. Right, the jump was a failure. Actually, this whole testing attempt was a failure. However, it was not a failure failure.

I would define the difference between failure and failure failure-further recognized as capital F Failure-as whether you can learn from it or not. I was not angry, no, not at all (well, maybe a little disappointed). This was just a failure, and that was okay. I had a theory to try from the last attempt.

The human body is not optimized for flight. It's no secret; after all, powered flight took until a hundred years ago to even be conceived properly. People fly by going in aircraft with wings that force air over the top faster, which generates lift from the bottom to allow flight. I didn't have wings, but neither did some of the parahumans on this planet. They had an external source of lift too, granted, but so did I. The field inside me. I was sure that's how I would fly.

I took an unnecessary breath before pushing the field into my feet. Nothing overt happened. I gave a small hop and took several seconds to fall only a few feet. Hah! I found the right way to go about this. I had everything I needed already, I just needed to use it.

Manipulating the field is hard to describe with words. It's like making different shapes that each have different effects. Shaping the field into a flat disk below me resulted in me hovering in mid air with zero deviations in altitude. Invigorated by this success, I continued my efforts. I finally succeeded with the shape of wings upon my back. There was no difference to this in the eyes of anyone else but me, but it made all the difference. I felt lighter in body, and knew the result that was coming.

I gave a mental flap to the metaphysical wings around me as I pushed off the ground. I flew into the sky like a speeding missile. Faster and faster they flapped as I increased in speed. A laugh of pure joy escaped me, unheard by anyone in the universe. What I would have gave for this earlier in life….

I ascended, higher and higher. Until I saw the curvature of the Earth, until the uppermost clouds were below me, until the stars shone as brilliantly as possible without atmospheric distortion hampering their beauty.

I felt no need to breath, but I wouldn't be able anyways with the sight I could see. The blue marble beneath me rotated so peacefully, eternally ignorant of the suffering that occurred on its face. I honed my vision as far as possible to see the cities and the life within them all around the planet. A brief flash of something not black occurred in the corner of my eyes, and I looked to see the moon, radiating it's peaceful glow as always. A thought of achievement came to me, and I pulled myself towards the natural satellite of the planet behind me. I accelerated faster and faster with the lack of atmosphere and fuck you physics field around me until the moon was the size of earth previously with the distance between us.

It's alien landscape called out to me as I spotted the artificial constructs marking the surface. I chose one at random and flew down to it, touching down near the lunar surface for the first time in several decades of mankind's history.

An erect, white flag greeted me as I landed. Once a proud symbol of American achievement, its details were lost to time and the sun's harsh rays. It was almost symbolic that there was no overreaching authority that indicated it was there, only that humans were.

I flew a few inches above the surface, careful to leave it unmarred by my visit. I almost felt unworthy to intrude on the achievement in front of me, but I touched down a single foot next to a footprint I spotted anyway, pairing up an astronaut's boot with a Van's sneaker. The contrast was almost comical.

I spent most of the day just having fun on the moon. It was like going to a museum alone. All kinds of history were there to explore. Eventually I ended my journey by simultaneously regretting a lack of camera and watching the Earth from the moon. I could make out the lights of the cities and even their outlines. They were simply marvelous to look at…. I could also make out the Simurgh floating above what looked like northern Europe at the time, a reminder to me how our species was denied the gift of space travel by these extradimensional constructs.

I made my way from this one-sixth gravity environment, passed through space, and landed safely back on Earth near where I originally took off from. It was possible I might have been spotted, but it would likely be limited to specialize equipment or thinker parahumans. A human sized object travelling at the speeds I move while not leaving any visible trail from friction is absurdly difficult to spot. At worst, I am 'unmasked' only to a few people. The Protectorate certainly wouldn't post images on new parahumans not in costume, and most villain groups wouldn't either due to fear of retribution.

I enjoyed the morning of the 4th day at a nice donut shop near the beach. I have spent a lot of time near the beach recently… usually stealing clothes or making use of the free showers adorning the coast. I hadn't felt hungry in several days, but food is quite the comfort when you can't make sense of reality. People change, polices change, life changes, but food stays somewhat constant. It also helped that I didn't need to deal with the need and negative effects of food.

Not being tired is a concept I cannot express to you. You are simply incapable of understanding it. We live life in degrees of pain, never completely in its absence. They may not be crippling, but they are always present. It is encouraging to always feel ready to run a marathon, to eat food without regard to nourishment or energy requirements, and not having to use the bathroom because food and water are arbitrary anyway.

My energy would be put to good use though. When I listened to a patrol outside the shop, a transmission came through that definitively interested me.

"...be advised that The Electric Ravens were seen entering the Staffsford Mall on the corner of 4th Avenue. The PRT and the Protectorate have been notified. The wards are currently en route…"

Well now… that was interesting. That statement of the wards being sent meant this was likely a nonlethal situation, well-to be fair, I haven't found a lethal situation for me yet-nonlethal for everyone else. I could see crime here firsthand, and, honestly, I had nothing else planned for today. A primary source for villain motivations sounded like a good way to occupy my time for now.

My mind made up, I left the shop before blurring towards the mall and landing on the roof. I peered through the glass to watch the oddest sight I had seen since arriving in this world. A tall man, dressed in black with a number of red checkers and a black cape, a short man, dressed in bright cyan, a skinny man, dressed in the most intense shade of yellow I have ever seen… seriously, I can look at the sun, and this man's costume was almost killing my vision. I mentally filed his suit under the shade of 'eye-raping' yellow and moved on to the final member of this unlawful quartet, a short woman in black spandex with yellow highlights on the arms and legs.

The man in red and black seemed to be their leader, given that he was addressing the gathering crowd of both levels.

"Ladies and Gentlemen! I am your lovely host as always, Razor of the Electric Ravens!" Dear god, this man was seriously into his speech…

"You may think of this as a hold up. You are in fact being robbed, and, no, I know what your wondering, but the elderly do not get a discount!" His statements were accompanied by a flurry of hand gestures and walking around.

"Do not think of this as simple thievery, no, think of this as you fine people paying for a wonderful show. I only want your valuables, not your time. Well, " He looked pointedly at a few female members of the audience, "I wouldn't mind some time with a few of you, but fear not! I have standards! Give up your items willingly and I promise no harm will come to you."

"Hurry the fuck up Razor. The wards are on the way." The fellow in eye-raping yellow hissed through his mask.

Razor turned with a swish of his cape and put a hand over his chest,

"Do you not see my struggles, fair citizens? My own allies are against me!" He put his arm over his eyes and sniffled a few times before lifting his other hand up and over his head. Metal jewelry of all kinds began gravitating towards his raised hand. Rings, necklaces, phones, and more slowly flew towards him.

The few braver-or perhaps smarter-souls that tried leaving the area ending up floating between the floor and ceiling, courtesy of the man who wears too much yellow that was waving at them. The man in cyan turned to him and spoke in a sleepy voice,

"You should chill out more Newton, boss knows what he's doing."

The newly-named Newton had a full face mask on, but I could feel his disgust radiating through the material on his face and the entire building separating us.

"I swear to god, Glaze. If I have to hear one more of your fucking ice puns, I'm locking you in a sauna."

Glaze's mask only covered the top half of his face, which allowed me access to a clear view of the fake horror on his face.

"Newton, " He chided, "There's no need to get so frosty with me-" His sentence was cutoff when he ended up floating near the second story of the building by his conversation partner.

"Hey, don't look at me if your next shower is barely above freezing!"

Newton just sighed and ignored his teammate's indignation while the only female of the group entered the conversation.

"Newton, " she pinched the bridge of her nose, "put Glaze down."

"No way. He fucking started it-"

"I don't care. The wards are on the way. Glaze, go watch the entrances. Newton, go watch Glaze and make sure he doesn't break anything… again." From her tone I could assume she was tired. Not in the physical sense like Glaze, but rather in the sense that she had done damage control like this multiple times before.

Newton grumbled, but acquiesced to her command and put Glaze down. They both ended up wandering near the main entrance to the building and managed to not kill each other on the way there. I feel like I'm watching the power rangers from an alternate universe right now….

While all this was going on, Razor had produced a large number of valuables from everyone in the room and stored them into a sack he had procured from… somewhere. I watched a PRT van speed down the street less than a block away from my position and decided to swiftly intervene. I tore the bottom half of my shirt off and tied it around my face. The fabric didn't seem to hinder my sight at all, and, though crude, it should be enough to stop any details from quick glances should I need to cease moving for a moment.

Down below, Razor finished tying his bag before addressing the crowd.

"Thank you for your cooperation ladies and gentlemen. Our group has a 30 day money back guarantee should you find us later! We hope you enjoyed this afternoon's entertainment! Dune, if you would do the honors?" He asked the only female of the group with a swish of his cape.

She visibly rolled her eyes before a disk of sand gathered underneath her feet. She levitated a few inches off the ground before moving closer to Razor's position. The sand remained solid, but expanded to make enough room to accommodate Razor and his stolen goods.

They floated over to their two other members as the disk expanded once more. The few remaining people in the air slowly floated down as Newton began pointing towards the window in a restaurant across the plaza.

"Wards are almost here!" He said as he quickly mounted the floating platform. He stopped to offer a hand to his companion in blue when I made my move.

I ran through the entrance of the building before looping around their group and focusing on their apparent leader. My perceptions increased even faster than my ground speed as I focused on the hand about to grab his cape. I didn't know if any of them had a brute rating, so I focused the field around me to extend from my hand and wrap around his entire body just before I yanked on his cape. It seemed like the wise decision to prevent his internals from spraying over the crowd… actually, it's more likely he would end up as a charred husk and the crowd would instead suffer severe burns from the resulting superheated air.

Regardless of his potential death, I took the sack from him and placed it in the center of the plaza where he originally stole everything. I then wrapped my arm around his waist before accelerating to an area of downtown San Diego where there were several abandoned buildings. I stopped for a second to listen for any heartbeats within as Razor's mind finally seemed to comprehend he wasn't in the mall anymore. I moved inside a hole in the wall before placing him ass down on the floor. I didn't technically need anything to bind him with. I mean, he was likely disoriented from the unexpected transport, and I wanted to be back before he could go anywhere anyway, but I did want to talk to their group after. I looked towards the ceiling for inspiration before spotting ducts there.

An idea formed in my head as I rose to greet the ceiling. I shaped the field around my hand once more, but this time I folded it into a v around my pinky and palm. I squeezed it as thin as it would go before trying to pass my hand through the thin material. It parted with no effort before my paper-thin knife. I quickly cut off several sections before twisting several together to form a makeshift rope that was rather inflexible.

I stopped only to tie-more wrap, really-the material around the front of Razor's body before I took off towards the mall again. It wouldn't hold him as I left it, but I planned on circling the steel around the rest of his teammates.

I arrived back at the scene to find the other 3 members of his team on the sand disk. They all turned just before I ran through the door to find their leader missing. Newton summed it up best, and he had the unfortunate luck of being in the back, which made him my next target.

"Where the fuck did the boss g-" I was on a timetable. The wards were in the parking lot right now.

The process of relocating Newton proved easier now that I was doing it a second time. I placed him next to Razor but facing 90 degree to the right. I returned once again to find Dune had noticed the cut off sentence. There was a touch of fear and uncertainty in her tone. Her heart was beating much faster now.

"Glaze, Newton's gon-" I repeated the process with her, noticing that the moment I left the building the disk of sand seemed to crumble of its own accord. Interesting, so it responded to distance measured by shard over her mental commands.

I arrived back at the scene one final time to see Glaze landing on his back from the loss of his previous platform. He immediately got up and tried starting to form a curved ice wall behind him. His hands glowed blue as he looked into the crowd of onlookers who barely had time to realize what had just happened.

"Hey, watch-" I removed him from the area just as a large girl with a shovel opened the door. I stopped minutely to stroke the fires of my pride by forming the field around my finger and carving an infinity symbol around Razor's bag.

I moved back to the warehouse I had left the rest of his team before. I completed the circle of members all facing opposite corners, back to back, by tying Glaze in. I decided to tear the cape off Razor before turning it into 4 parts and blindfolding each member. It was mostly due to my lack of costume, something to definitely fix in the future.

I politely waited for them to orient themselves for a few seconds.

"Where are we?"

"I can't see."

"Glaze, quit fucking holding my hand!"

"So, " I interjected, "you're the Electric Ravens?"

"Nah dude, " Glaze disputed from his position on the floor, "You've got it all wrong. We're the Make-A-Wish foundation." He tried turned his head towards my voice, but I had already moved to the other side of the room to throw him off.

"Uh huh," I expressed my disbelief of his claim, "Well, I have a few questions to ask if you don't mind…"

Newton awkwardly elbowed Glaze as Razor began to speak.

"Who are you?" His tone was all business, his act from before dropped in the face of an unknown.

"Generally, when using the pronoun 'I', we refer to ourselves, " I drawled, "but my name isn't important right now. I just want to know what you were doing… what I decide to do after depends on your answers."

He continued shifting his head around as I kept relocating in the room.

"We were robbing a mall, " he said hesitantly.

"Yes, yes, I saw that. I want to know why you were robbing it."

His brow furrowed in disbelief at my question.

"Because, my rent doesn't pay itself. No one was hurt anyway…" He finished a touch defensively.

And it was true. His control was obviously refined to the point where earrings and other body piercings weren't gruesomely pulled out of people. Additionally, Newton lowered people quite gently from several meters in the air. They certainly could have done a lot worse in the collateral damage department.

"You control metal, and rob people for money?"

"So? All I can do is pull metal towards me, " he stated bitterly, "how is that useful?"

"Can you attract bullets?" I asked, several ideas forming in my mind.

"What? Yeah, but how is that any useful? I'm not bulletproof."

"No… you don't have to be. Other people are though, and you could redirect all the fire into a brute instead… given the control I saw from you. " I mused.

"What about the rest of you? Do you all share rent?" I asked to the otherwise silent people next to him.

Newton decided to respond first.

"No. We all live alone, " He said neutrally.

"And what was your reason for earlier?"

"I , uh, accidentally flipped a cop car when I was experimenting with my powers, " He sounded rather embarrassed now, "I got scared when more people showed up, things escalated and I just… ran." I think the term for that is digging your own grave. There was more to his story for sure, but I believe he was telling the truth.

"And you didn't want to get arrested…" I trailed off while he nodded

"Is it my turn for story time?" Glaze so eloquently interrupted.

"Sure." I said, hovering horizontally so my mouth ended up right next to his ear.

He let out a short hiss as his heart skipped a beat. He transitioned into a mild cough before recovering quite admirably.

"I didn't really do well in school," he started, "well, not by their standards. I thought the dick I drew on the teacher's desk was prett-" Both Newton and Dune elbowed him.

"Not the time, " Newton growled out.

"Ow. As I was saying, " he stuck his tongue out at Newton, "This seemed like the best job opportunity for me. I don't need some asshole in the Protectorate to tell me when and how to use my powers." I mentally filed him under the list of people with control issues.

His issue was one that garnered the least sympathy with me, which was ironic given that it was a least a partial reason for not joining the Protectorate, the arrogance that I could do better alone. Did that make me a hypocrite? Hmm, probably. Regardless, I didn't come here to judge the integrity of this group, only their motivations, and there was one more potential viewpoint to get.

"I see, " I moved to a spot a few feet in front of Dune, "and you?"

"Medical bills," she said curtly, "My boyfriend's sick. Protectorate doesn't pay enough."

Perhaps in salary, but I doubt any of them know the lengths the Protectorate is willing to go to get more capes on their side. Her issue was something I could relate to at least. If there was something that Scion hadn't changed, it was that medical costs were artificially high. Universal healthcare in the United States was decried in both worlds for being socialist while those same people had no qualms about driving on publicly-funded roads.

"Fair enough." What more can I say really? That you're a bad person for trying to save someone you love?

"What now?" Razor spoke up from Dune's left.

"You've all given me honest answers, so I see four options I can take from here. Option one is I kill you," they all stiffened, and I saw the air visible get colder around Glaze, "option two is I force you into working for me, option three is I release you over to the authorities and to their judgment, or…"

It wasn't really a hard choice in the end. The two options were thrown out almost immediately. Minor crime doesn't deserve a death penalty (well, at least the majority in the 21st century first world believe so), nor do I think I have the mental fortitude to kill someone helpless at my feet like that. Option two is a gross mismanagement of my time and abilities. I have no need for a small time villain group, and even if I did I could hire them anyway. Why have employees that hate you when you could have loyal minions that would be willing to die for you?

Options three and four were much closer in terms of viability. I'm pretty sure any option besides three would make me an accessory at best, but I can't say I really cared about that in this instance. The main question is… if I turned them in right now, what would the Protectorate do? I suspect they would perform a parahuman plea bargain. Charging each member so they get the longest possible legal punishment, only to have a negligible sentence by conveniently agreeing to play nice with their side of the law. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, assuming (and it is a big assumption) that the prosecuted are not wholly ignorantly in legal matters, but I would rather they joined willingly.

That leaves only option four.

"Or, " I repeated, "I can let you go." Said statement was punctuated by tearing the metal on each of their sides.

Razor tested his newfound freedom by slowly moving his arms and pushing the makeshift bindings away.

"Not that I'm not ungrateful for this, but why?"

It was a fair question all things considered. They each began to stand up, though they didn't remove their blindfolds. How thoughtful…

"It would change nothing in the end. No, the system must be changed." I said the last part quietly, but Razor tilted his head curiously in my direction. I chose not to answer that question yet.

"Well, gentleman and madam, " I gave a useless nod in Dune's direction, she wouldn't see it anyway, "this is where we part. I'd encourage you to go rogue in the future if not the Protectorate, who I think you would find surprisingly accommodating to your needs. However, it's doubtful we'll ever meet again, so… goodbye."

I left faster than their farewells, though lip reading revealed the thank yous anyway. I initially continued my morning routine of trying new things while deciding what to do with the new information I learned.

I, in part, suspected at least a few of their motivations. I think when I make changes, the first will be PR towards current non-harmful villains. So much crime could be avoided if people knew the lengths the Protectorate would go to turn you towards their side. Ignorance was fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your viewpoint, much easier a problem to solve than monetary issues. I suspect the forced drive towards conflict by the shards didn't help matters either.

Still though, these could be fixed, but not solely by me. I am fast, extremely fast, in fact, I probably am the number one non-teleporting mover on this planet right now, but I can't be everywhere. I don't have the connections, the credibility, the time, the patience, nor all the knowledge necessary to implement these changes. I needed people that do. Well… credibility for myself would be established in the next Endbringer fight, and I was planning on talking to Cauldron after that… yes, I think they could and would help.

I found a store later in the day, one that sold morphsuits. An idea came to me when I passed by that isle, and I purchased a black one on the spot along with white thread and a needle. I went to the roof of an abandoned building and decided to make my costume there. It was a simple addition, just a white infinity sign on both the front and back of the chest, but the symbolism called out to me. I ended up storing it in an air duct and cleaning my hands in a water fountain on the other side of the city. I have a field that ignores physics, and I really wish it ignored dirt too…

Still, later that night I decided to finally sleep for the first time in almost a week. There were too many things to think about, and I figured a fresh perspective might help. The sounds of the city became my white noise as I drifted into unconsciousness on the roof of a skyscraper I didn't recognize.

There were no dreams, no energy gained from the process, but I felt… better. I think it was an instinctive response to sleeping more than anything. My 5th day in this world was spent almost entirely at a public library. I walked down several aisles therein, flipping through entire books in a matter of seconds (or much more sedately when someone walked by). It was perfect for any facts I might need to know, since I could just 'look up' the information in my head, but it was rather underperforming in the area of comprehension. I memorized all the words on the page, but the concepts themselves were something I needed to actually think over to understand. Regardless of that disadvantage, just having access to that information was worth its weight in tinkertech.

I managed to stay there almost the entire day-just taking occasional breaks to cool off and focus on something else-until closing time. Nothing abnormal happened that night; I decided to remain awake once more. It was really the day after that the excitement started. It was about 9 am-I was buying a churro from a street vendor-when an obnoxiously loud droning noise filled the air. It continued it's high pitch before dropping and going back up again. My initial confusion meant me and the vendor realized what the sound was at roughly the same time. It was an air raid siren, but why…

I paid my money as the man started closing his cart on the spot. Crowds of people were rushing chaotically in specific directions within a minute, guided by officers of the law. I moved my way over to the beach, and found a TV display in a store window, describing in large letters that an Endbringer was approaching and that civilians should take shelter at one of several dedicated sites. I went back to the site where I stored my costume two days previous and placed it on. Why was an Endbringer coming here so soon? I looked at a small puddle at my feet and saw my own reflection. Of course… its here for me. I finished dressing and zipped up the back.

I found my way over to the beach where an assortment of capes were either streaming in from the city sidewalks, or appearing out of thin air by various teleporters. A large storm cloud gathered on the horizon and approached with a visible speed. Leviathan… here for me. I looked down at my hands that would soon be put to the test.

Let him come… for I will be waiting.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: I need more than a Shamwow**

There is a somber mood within the ever-increasing number of people down the beach. The rate each of their hearts beat is much faster than the people in the city operating under normal conditions. I suppose I can't fault any of them for it either. Endbringers are bad news here, the boogiemen of Earth Bet. In my home universe we feared each other, usually for their political, economic, or religious beliefs. Here? They feared inhuman monsters that they can't even understand. All they know is that millions of their own neighbors are killed each year with the same ease we step on ants.

I am one of the few capes not arriving via teleporter here, but there is a mass of people making quite a lot of noise to let me know where the defense will be initiated… and that's all they've ever done against the Endbringers, defend. Offense tends to be nullified and the person starting it usually ends up dead. Their hopes burn as small as possible. Growing slightly when an Endbringer feigns injury and retreats, only to be crushed once more when they find dozens of their own dead, thousands of civilians, and the despair that in 3 months time it will all happen again. Routine slaughter like clockwork….

There are many teleporters on the beach now, vanishing and reappearing with great speed to try and field as many bodies as they can. There are close to a hundred people here now with more showing up every second, accompanied by the hiss and cracks and all other assortments of noise when the Protectorate movers (I suspect few villain movers show up) move more and more people around through space.

The rain arrived soon later, slowly at first. Several capes then created a large dome of glowing force fields to insulate the group from the weather outside. The only shaker inside I recognize is Narwhal. Few people are seven feet tall, and fewer still have glowing horns on their heads. Everyone here is like a machine, only concerned with the survival of the whole system. They have to be, I imagine, when they rely on each of the people next to them. The most any of the people here can wish for is to survive… well, unless I have anything to say about that.

Supplies are coming with the movers now with more and more people moving them to specific locations. Commands are being shouted, orders given, their time table is strict. This attack was several weeks early off schedule, though it probably wasn't enough to cause a mass panic within the world, or, at least not more than the Endbringers existence themselves. After all, each attack didn't have exactly 3 months of time to recover anyway.

I feel somewhat out of place within this group of people. Almost everyone is either is their own groups discussing what to do or expressing their fears to each other. Few even spare me a glance before deciding they have better things to do than observe someone they've never seen before. The lack of familiarity with the faces around me is frustrating, frustrating because it was entirely preventable.

My memory is perfect now, and it would have been trivial to find a public database of capes on the internet. I haven't even touched a computer in a week, no. Instead, I've been drowning my sorrows in mindless stimulation. I assumed I had more time, and chose to put off the task of preparing myself for the future. I tend to suffer from chronic procrastination, but no one ever died because of something I put off. I knew Leviathan attacking me was a possibility, and I chose to do nothing, though I suppose it's not entirely my fault. I can't blame myself for being human… and I could atone by ending it now.

How to kill Leviathan? I very much doubted I was the first to ask that question here, but was that even the question to ask? I needed to start at the most base element of a goal. What exactly was I trying to accomplish here today? Kill Leviathan is the most obvious answer, but I don't think that was exact. Stopping him would be my goal, and his death wasn't strictly necessary for that. I can do many things, but the secondary question is always, "Should I?"

Assume for a moment I had a button in my hand that would instantly kill Leviathan. Should I even press it? The answer sounds trivial at first, that I should push it and spare everyone, but what are the consequences of that? When Behemoth died, three more Endbringers emerged to replace him like some twisted version of a hydra. It's not impossible that the phenomenon was unique to Behemoth, but I wouldn't bet any money on that. The safe assumption was that by killing Leviathan, more Endbringers would replace him. They could be Khonsu or Bohu or Tohu or they could be a completely separate Endbringer that ends up killing more millions of people.

I think I would still press the button in the end. It took several months for Khonsu to emerge after Behemoth's demise, and I can't imagine that would deviate far for his sibling. Even if they arrived earlier, I have several ideas to create a defense that could be organized in short time. Unless of course they arrived the same hour of his death, but-like being struck by an asteroid-some things are out of our control. Now the original question must be answered. How do I kill Leviathan?

I don't know if _I_ can, at least not by myself. Maybe I could manage to generate enough force, but that's just as liable to damage the entire city at a minimum. Endbringers get denser-impossibly denser-as you approach their vulnerable cores. Additional, they abuse dimensional fuckery so they don't inadvertently end up sinking into the planet with how much mass lies within their bodies. Not only that, but they heal, and heal faster the closer you get to the core. All I can do is output kinetic energy, which is just about as inefficient as you can get when trying to pierce the core. We would see soon.

Sting… sting would help a lot. The problem was Flechette wasn't present. Almost everyone here was older than 18, the only exceptions being the few wards for this city and the surrounding areas. I could ask they bring her, but, realistically, they don't know me and have no reason to trust my word. She was on the other side of the country right now, and I would need to unfortunately wait until the battle started before they might listen. Now that I thought about it, the same thing applied to me being the focus of Leviathan.

I watched Razor's group arrive from a street nearby before they took shelter under the dome. I watched the rising tide down the beach, and the increasingly-heavy rain pouring down on the field with great volume. I watched the new arrivals. A man in blue armor with silver highlights appeared with a group of a dozen others. The halberd clued me in to his identity of Armsmaster. He looked decidedly unhappy with a perpetual frown on his face. If I had to take a guess, I would assume it was because he hadn't yet finished the prediction program. It was sort of 'his' thing to be proud of, and he couldn't test it yet, perfectly understandable really. Regardless, he was decidedly more dour than the person next to him. She could not be anyone else but Miss Militia with the soldier uniform and all the pro-American attire draped over her. Just looking at her would probably inspire people to dismantle a Gulag and build a McDonald's over it in the name of Henry Ford and… I think that metaphor outpaced me at some point, but the essence remains.

I caught sight of a sleek, draconic armor flying in at high speeds before landing just outside the makeshift shelter, Dragon. I expect to talk to her in the future, but right now we have more immediate concerns. The waterline gradually crept up the shore until it the beach's diameter had halved… meaning the water level was rising rapidly. Leviathan would be here within two minutes, easily. It was probably closer to one than two, and then… we would see… we would certainly see.

Three new arrivals changed the focus of the situation immediately. The Triumvirate, the group that the people around me could put the most hope ever into finishing this fight. They stood out from the crowd like a white guy in Detroit. The first, Alexandria, fit the perfect picture of a powerful female hero. She stood tall and confident, even under the face of the oppressive rain outside. I suppose it wasn't surprising in any way. She needed to both inspire others to be calm, and this was not her first Endbringer fight. She was likely more than aware of her durability versus the perceived offensive capabilities of Leviathan. No one here, not even me (I could only assume), knew what Leviathan was truly capable of. He would not be holding back against me, and I needed to isolate myself from everyone else quickly.

The second member of the group to occupy my attention was Eidolon. His hood with a soft green glow inside clued me in to his identity. The glow was probably a part of his costume, and served to remind me how inadequate my own was while he kept his gaze firmly fixated on the approaching storm. He was, in part, responsible for this fight in the first place, or at least as much as I was. I idly wondered whether he was guilty of the most counts of involuntary manslaughter on Earth Bet before deciding it didn't really matter in the end. He could of activated the Endbringers and then lost the shard for control, or perhaps they still listened to his subconscious desires for conflict. The exact relationship was never made clear, but his death marked a very specific behavioral change that indicated there was a relationship present between them. I was partly curious as to whether his shard influenced his desire for opponents which influenced his unknowing commands to the Endbringers, so maybe the blame lied more with the entities anyway. They did make the Endbringers after all. Either way, one was dying today.

It was the third and final member of the Triumvirate who had my attention. Legend stood solemn, but inspiring, with a blue and white costume covering his attractive figure. He spoke the same minute that he arrived. The rain was pouring faster as the seconds ticked by, and we didn't have much time at all. Small rivers were forming on the ground and flowing downhill into the ocean. The moment he cleared his throat the noise level inside the dome was almost reduced to zero.

"We don't have very much time right now, so I'll keep this brief," he was talking quite fast, pressed for time as he was, "Everyone here, even those who identify as villains or rogues, are heroes right now, coming to the defense of the city. The primary piece of wisdom I would share with you today is not to underestimate Leviathan. I have seen many good many and women die when they let their guards down." He paused as a particularly large wave struck the small hill below us.

"Leviathan is a powerful hydrokinetic, and despite what you may believe about him, he isn't stupid. In previous fights, he has displayed a level of cunning that has caused the deaths of many people. Specifically, his water shadow. This is the main threat to you. At the speeds he moves, the water becomes harder than concrete and is more than capable of ending your life should you be hit. He can also manipulate water in other ways, and we suspect he uses this to move at the incredible speeds he manages underwater, far faster than any speedster we have on record."

The information he gave was not unknown to me, but it served as another anchor that this was reality. He spoke as a man who knew that a fourth of the people around him wouldn't be going home. He spoke of the strategy for the battle that was not going to be implemented at all. Contain and attack primarily, that was all they could do. He spoke of the belief that the Endbringers felt pain and actually bled… and who knows, perhaps one will today. That was all he had time to say right now.

In the end, I somewhat awkwardly ended up by myself. I could have joined the other brutes in the room to be lead by Alexandria, but all that would accomplish is putting more people at risk. I took an armband from an unknown cape before sliding it onto my left wrist. The display asked for my name, so I obliged by pressing the button and considering my response.

What to call my cape persona? I think the best question to start with would be, what exactly do I want people to think when they hear my name? Names inspire hope, fear, strength, virtue, and more, but I think I want mine to represent power. I can't tell you why, only that it just feels as if it would be right. It seemed fitting for me then, the one name that popped into my head. Power and might indeed…

"Zeruel," I intoned quietly. I would have to wait until later to feel bad if someone else had that name.

The display asked for confirm which I gave, and that was all I could manage before the fight began.

The dome disappeared around us and all at once the sound came flooding in just like the water around it. It was deafening, and I was almost positive there was more water than air in the sky right now. This rain was unnatural, and had more in common with a waterfall spread over a significant area. I looked out into the sea to try and find the day's target. Visibility was limited to only a scarce ten feet or so for normal people, and even I could not see more than a mile out before the air blurred with too much water.

I spotted a miniscule flicker of green light several hundred feet out into the water, just under the surface. It only lasted a moment, and someone else could have convinced themselves it was just their eyes playing tricks on them, but I had perfect recall. That light was there, and its path to the shore proved that when-just as a large wave crashed onto the rising beach-Leviathan emerged in a spray of mist. Shouts and frantic messages spewed forth from the communicator on my wrist as Leviathan stopped moving entirely. His head slowly turned to scan the crowd of capes. Some blasters were already firing at his stationary figure, but he ignored them entirely.

In the blink of an eye I moved several hundred paces down the beach. Leviathan snapped his head to look in my direction, and I had just enough time to press the left button of button on my device and say,

"I will occupy his attention, " before he left his position to dash at me.

_Fast_. He was very fast. How fast was hard to gauge without specific instruments, but-looking at the blasters in the air-the eyes of the other parahumans didn't even register Leviathan was gone until he was only twenty feet away from me. I forced myself to crush any brewing fear as a thirty foot tall monstrosity ran towards me, highlighted by the glowing green eyes on his misshapen face.

Leviathan turned instantly before I was in grabbing distance. He moved his own body length back towards the ocean before dashing towards me again. Two water shadows with his vague outline flew in my direction at supersonic speeds. I countered by moving around them and trying to close the distance. Leviathan obliged and half swam, half ran his way to me. I closed two thirds the distance before he cleared the first, but his mass advantage won out in the trade. I braced against the arm that backhanded me before I was sent skidding along the wet ground. I didn't bother dodging the clawed hand attempting to grip my torso, merely shifting it down to my waist. I used the lack of range between us to my advantage and grabbed him back. My fingers sunk their full length into his arm as I clawed my way to his face. A massive wall of water passed over his back and threatened to slam me into the ground until I passed the field under my feet to reinforce my position.

I found purchase in one of Leviathan's eye sockets. Fitting my entire hand inside until the hellish glow within winked out of existence, my other hand began tearing flesh off Leviathan's neck as the capes down the beach finally realized he had moved position. Lasers and beams of different effects I couldn't identify struck at Leviathan's back and legs at the behest of the plans relayed via communicator. He paid them no mind even as scores of burnt marks appeared over his flesh. They weren't doing any real damage, and he couldn't afford to waste time on them.

He attempted to lift me up and return with me to the ocean, but I formed the field within me into wings and resisted his attempts. Half his body ended up snapping back to me when the unplanned resistance affected him. His other arm attempted to pry me off his face while I inverted my vertical direction and carried myself above his head. A single kick broke the hold his arm had over me as I climbed my way over his back.

Water poured out by gallons measuring in the thousands around his body while I hung on. Anytime he attempted to move more than a few feet I pulled him back using my strength of flight. I forced myself in the direction towards his tail even as it coiled around my neck and tried to throw me off. His thrashing never ceased while my hands found purchase in his flesh. Water came out of his skin and forced its way down my nose and throat when his tail proved ineffective. I stopped breathing to halt the reflex for coughing that never came. The feeling of fluid in the lungs in extremely uncomfortable, as is the taste of salt water.

I ended up at the base of his tail before deciding to change plans for holding him still. I moved to a standing position off his side while still clinging to his body, and then forced my flight downward. Instead of defying gravity, I augmented it heavily. My feet sunk into the wet sand below me until I was all but sitting in the depression made with my unwilling captive.

One arm held his location mostly steady as the other extended its fingers entirely and-altering the field around my hand into a knife's blade-plunged into his flesh. The first few dozen layers offered no discernable resistance, and even the ones after were barely noticeable, until my arm had buried its way to the shoulder in his body. That was as far as my arm could go, but where was the damn core? Of course, this wouldn't be so easy. Leviathan wasn't watching me mutilate his projections of flesh either. He turned his torso in a show of inhuman flexibility to hit me with claws, legs, and his tail. Each movement was augmented by a wave of water that crashed into me and forced me to brace against them.

In this short time the other brutes had arrived into the fray, much to my horror. They attempted to strike at any location they could. Even as immobile as he was, Leviathan was still an Endbringer. He uncoiled his tail from my neck-his arms continued trying to pull me off-before whipping it in each direction of four brutes on the other side. I hesitated slightly, and Leviathan almost pulled himself free, before I decided to keep holding him. A massive line of water flowed forth and struck all of them in the chests before they could react. Two were bisected immediately from the force, while the other two were sent over a hundred feet down the beach. I made the choice to not try and help them because they were brutes, and at least two of them died…. Could I blame myself for not trying, or would they have died anyway? I don't think that question would ever be answered for me.

Alexandria flew to my side before looking at my arm buried completely inside his body. Her mouth parted slightly and her eyes widened., and that was all the time she had to react before Leviathan decided enough was enough and forced more water out of his body. An aquatic pressure wave exploded from his body like a liquid explosive and forced everyone else back. The water line had advanced to just behind me in this time and Leviathan forced lines of it into me at high speeds like a pressure washer. I kept my hand inside him while I felt the flesh trying to conjoin inside. His healing rate was quite fast….

Leviathan finally switched tactics. He couldn't force me off, even when he tried sprinting away, so he would convince me to do it. He turned his head to look at one of the blasters in the air, and lashed out an arm that sent a whip of water out at high speeds towards the man. The parahuman didn't even react until it was far to close to dodge. I made the decision then that I couldn't watch someone die knowingly if I didn't need to, and I wasn't going to do much more standing around on the ground.

I let go while forcing the water out of my lungs, and Leviathan greedily took advantage of that while I stood in front of the cape . I felt a minor heat from whatever blaster power he was aiming at Leviathan just as I braced myself against the water whip. It crashed into me harmlessly before dispersing in a thunderous noise around me.

In the mean time, Leviathan made his way to the first line of the city's buildings. He crashed through any force fields set up by capes and sent water shadows off into three different directions. Those three water shadows split down the middle to become six, which then moved towards different targets both in the air and on the ground. Those shadows were supersonic, and I could only block two, maybe three at most…. I had to put value onto human life, and that made me feel disgusted with myself. I chose the three closest people and moved them out of harm's way just in time. My hearing didn't spare me of the sound of bones breaking from the other three capes, nor the constant droning of my communicator calling out the number of deceased and injured.

I caught up to Leviathan within a few seconds. He was unnaturally fast on land, and something his size had no right to be supersonic, but I was hypersonic. I gripped his upper arm and forced his face into the concrete. He turned his head towards me to reveal the superfluous eye had healed completely. Even the blood stains were washed away by his presence. He attempted to flee once more-deeper into the city-before I dragged him back towards the shore to minimize collateral damage. He curiously stopped resisting my movement. The behavior shift was a cause for concern, and that was proven true a moment later. Leviathan allowed me to drag him back to the beach while the sky changed.

I watched droplets of water cling to each other as they left the clouds above us, until clumps the size of basketballs formed in the sky. The massive droplets of water then underwent a shift, turning solid as Leviathan changed the state of the matter within them. The end result were hailstones weighing over 10 pounds raining from the sky. They crashed with booming cracks onto the city behind me. Sand and water flew everywhere when the ice impacted the ground. Stones broke into pieces over my skull as my communicator sent off another wave of injury and death reports of the unlucky ones not under a force field when the hail hit. I let go of Leviathan once more to shield over a dozen capes from the deadly chunks of ice.

This wasn't good. I was much stronger than Leviathan, and marginally more resilient, but he outranged me hard with his power. I could relocate him though, something no other cape could claim. I made a silly mistake to fight him here, assuming the benefits of more people would outweigh the potential deaths. Maybe in a numbers game that would be true, but when people were actually dying? The heroes would have to organize something while that happened, something that actually accomplished anything…. I pressed the left button of my communicator before shouting into it and almost forgetting to slow my speech to human levels.

"Get Flechette ready to fire. I'll stall him." Legend knew who she was. I had to hope they would listen and get her here soon.

Leviathan attempted once more to go into the city, literally flying off the ground on a carpet of water, but we were both tired of playing games. I flew towards him and caught the end of his tail. I yanked him backwards as his water shadow continued straight through a building before sinking both my arms to their elbows in his back. He thrashed in my grasp to right himself before I kicked off the ground and sent us both in the sky.

I flew faster than ever before, not bothering to shield Leviathan with my field. A wave of fire erupted even through the water surrounding him as we ascended higher and higher. A mix of steam and smoke trailed behind us as we broke the initial cloud cover within a few seconds of flight. I felt the heat sweep over Leviathan's face as he needlessly cushioned me against the pressure wave. Leviathan was unable to physically resist our upward motion; the forces on his body locked his arms and legs outward and down. He compensated by wrapping his tail around my ankle and using the water off his back. He formed sheets of ice just in front of him to try and slow the climb, but they cracked and melted around us. My momentum was absolute here, and he could not stop me.

Before the minute we left the ground ended, Leviathan and I ended up in low earth orbit. I finally ceased my acceleration before letting go of his body. He recovered to the new battleground quickly and made swimming motions to move within the fluidless environment. The water around him underwent a curious phenomenon. The moment it seeped out of his skin, it boiled from the lack of pressure. It then rapidly froze under the frigid conditions of outer space. A layer of snow surrounded the Endbringer before he forced it back into its liquid state an inch or so off his skin.

If the circumstances were new to him, I gave him no reprieve to adapt. I moved once again, driving my arms entirely into his lower torso as we moved further from Earth. He responded with whips of water off his limbs that smashed harmlessly into my body. My strikes were mild to him, but they did some temporary damage. He did nothing in return to me, and he could do nothing to me.

That didn't stop him from trying to impale me with water jets and icicle spears as I tore large stripes of flesh from his hide. His skin had turned black from our transmit to orbit, and thick, black ichor coated my costume and hands. It poured out from his skin like a second power-only serving to act as a lubricant for my arms-as more and more of the crystalline structure that he was composed of forcibly left his body.

I dug into more of his flesh as we spun through the vacuum around us, uncaring of the radiation or lack of gravity. My efforts were halted from going further than an arms lengths by the rate at which he healed. I tore more and more chunks from his body until there was a cavity around his stomach I could fit my head and arms into. His expressionless face leered down at me as he tried to pull me out of his frame. His face showed no emotion: no hate, no joy, no anger. His capacity for thought was felt when he writhed at more impossible angles the deeper I went.

More and more resistance grew around my limbs as I went, until I was stopped around a central area of extremely dense flesh. Try as I might, there was nowhere to grab onto where I could force my hand into it. The field around me failed to stop Newton's third law on myself, and pushing more only resulted in Leviathan's spacial position being shifted. I grabbed one of the offending hands trying to remove me and pulled. I forced him to curl inward as I tried to use his arm to leverage my other hand closer to his core, but the end result was a large chunk torn off his clawed appendage instead.

That wasn't the biggest problem though. By pressing Leviathan towards a surface on Earth, I could theoretically force my way in with enough time… assuming I could reach his core, he didn't heal, and I didn't destabilize the planet as a byproduct. He did heal though-he healed very fast-and even faster the deeper I went. The same second I reached his inner most layers, an immense pressure pushed against me, and the bottom of the cavity inside him was already covered by another dozen layers the moment I decided to withdraw my hands. I needed help to make the killing shot. Digging through him was like cupping water out of a flooded hole with your hands while an earthquake was going off….

I kept Leviathan occupied until a message flashed across the screen of my handy, tinkertech wristwatch that had somehow survived all the punishment I was dishing out onto it. The location grid that currently only showed an error message now displayed a simple statement.

"If possible, bring back Leviathan and keep him stationary." I couldn't respond with words, and there was no screen to type with.

Instead, I responded by forcing my fists into Leviathan's lower chest and accelerating towards Earth. Friction against the air generated a large fireball that formed and pressed against Eden's super weapon as vapor trailed behind us from the liquid surrounding the alien creature. I augmented our own reentry speed until the details of the ground below became blurred from the compression of air in front of us.

I slowed our descent the instant we cleared the bottom of the cloud layer above the city. The light drizzle present picked back up to several times its previous output. I spotted the collection of capes down on the ground and steered my unwilling passenger into the ground two hundred feet down the beach. I expunged the water from my lungs once more as Leviathan's tail whipped sand in every direction. He struggled to free himself as the front line of capes approached my position. I spoke into my communicator, trying to prevent more deaths.

"Do not approach. You will die." They didn't listen, goddammit.

I grew tired of Leviathan's attempts and squeezed the field around my entire arm. I swung once into his elbow, sliding clean through the flesh until the black bone was revealed. A single push later and- overcoming an incredible resistance-Leviathan's arm had been severed at the elbow, dripping his unneeded blood all over myself and the sand. I repeated the process with his other arm and then his tail before the capes arrived. I kept him steady by forcing my foot through the front of his waist and repeating the procedure once more on both legs.

Leviathan's limbs were already healing rapidly, and the missing mass would be restored within 5 minutes at most, but for now he was nothing more than a writhing torso of flesh. Nigh-impenetrable flesh that could still sink an island, granted, but it was much easier to approach him.

The capes agreed with my unspoken assessment. Bindings of all kinds of matter and energy were formed over his incapacitated form as capes tried to emulate what I had done and dig into him. Walls of energy were created by shakers over the Endbringer to restrict his potential movement.

Leviathan disagreed with my unspoken assessment. He looked at the bindings over his body before looking at the offending capes. One second they were there, and in the next two dozen people instantly exploded in a cloud of blood. Three or four brutes near me grasped their chests and gave panicked gasps of air, but their bodies remained whole. Alexandria gave a pained grimace as her limbs twitched, before she seemed to recover and tried to join me in mutilating Leviathan. Leviathan was a not having any of it, and forced more and more water out of his skin until I was practically underwater and the few people near me were washed away with the tide.

The unlucky ones of the exact edge of his instant-kill range, nearly one hundred feet down the beach, dealt with a sudden loss of one part of their body. A mover far above us had his legs ripped apart by his own blood before he managed to escape to safety. My only reprieve was that the blood of the people around me mixed with the water that carried it away. The ferrous scent was sickening to my nose as I looked desperately down the beach. Leviathan switched tactics again. The rain formed long spears than solidified into ice. Like raining swords they descended into the city. Further away, jets of water shot out from the ground and went clean through the chests of several capes.

A young woman in purple held a crossbow and appeared indecisive of what to do in the face of all the death. They had managed to get her here after all…. I pressed the left button of my communicator and made a pocket of air using my arms, it was time to end this.

"Fire. I'll make sure it hits." I think Dragon removed the delay from my communicator, because Flechette looked at her wrist the moment I finished speaking.

She crouched down and aimed down the sights of her crossbow. Eidolon stood next to her and protected a large group of parahumans with some kind of cryokinetic power while she took a single breath. A two foot long bolt shot out at an agonizingly-slow pace towards us. Me and Leviathan both watched the proceedings before he decided to send a final fuck you. Water from the ocean surged in as an artificial tsunami while I shifted him into the path of the bolt. He lashed out with his tail that had grown to half its original length. Scourges of water flew off into the congregation of privileged humans while the bolt flew straight towards us with no drop over time.

I forced myself to ignore the frantic cries from my communication device of the dead, downed, and drowned while I intercepted the shot. I had to trust the other capes to protect the vulnerable right now. Letting go was not an option, so I leaned backwards to present the longest available path Flechette's ammunition could take through Leviathan. The point of her bolt passed through the side of his tail and through the healed cavity before existing out Leviathan's right shoulder with zero resistance. Gravity resumed its hold over the object and dropped it into the water around us.

The bolt had passed through the hole I had kept excavating to reveal the curved surface of something black, just beyond and above where I had been digging. The hole was closing almost instantaneously, even to my perceptions, so I forced my hand inside the narrow shaft to try and grip the object while I had kept Leviathan in the same position. We were currently under water now, and that sped up what remained of his limbs to match my own speed. His arms and tail rained down over my form rapidly, but to no recognizable effect. My poor communicator could take no more of the abuse I threw at it, field or not, and broke off my wrist.

I pushed hard enough for the ground to crack around us as I tried to go deeper than before. I felt the central object-that I suspected to be Leviathan's core-move away, closer to his chest now. I needed to get closer, and get Leviathan away from the city. I pushed along the ground, dragging Leviathan deeper and farther into the ocean. It gave him no advantages, but several disadvantages. His medium of choice was everywhere, but he couldn't use it offensively against me. Though, to his credit, he certainly tried. Icicle spears were launched at me and broke on my skin, strong currents pushed in polar directions on my body, and water was forced into my throat once more, only to turn into jagged ice blocks inside my esophagus. There was no carbon dioxide build up in my blood, and I fortunately felt no desire to cough out an icy iron maiden from my lungs.

I could barely see now. The depths we were at held almost no light, save the bright green glow of Leviathan's eyes that illuminated his injured expanse of flesh. No one else was around for him to hurt, and he could not escape me here. In his own element, he ironically became much weaker. I pressed down even harder, until we were both completely submerged under the sea floor. Leviathan pushed matter away from us with strong underwater currents, but it didn't stop me from retracting my arms and filling the space in with my legs before he could heal completely.

I gradually ripped my way down, taking out chunks and then filling in the space with more of my body. I had the core dead to sights, I just needed to reach it. I carved greater quantities of matter out of Leviathan's torso and forced my legs down further. The pocket of space I had created was attempting to close around my head now, only stopped by Leviathan's own hand trying to remove me. The flesh on his outer surface healed much slower, slow enough so that move my head back and forth prevented my from being sealed in.

I burrowed deeper into Leviathan like some kind of human parasite, until I had to drive my legs into the deeper layers with more force. I pushed my hands further in, and forced my head to follow when it was necessary. The Endbringer's flesh healed over on the exterior, leaving me sealed inside him entirely. The walls of his inside vibrated as he tried to free himself. I could almost feel his desperation as he tried to claw his way into his own body to extract me.

I dug inside my organic cavern, trying to outpace the regeneration, the only light visible through a small hole in front of my chest. I pushed my fingers inside it and _pulled. _The flesh slowly parted from my efforts, only to almost instant reconstitute to its previous shape before I propelled my hands inside the bigger hole. There was a small chamber inside the incredibly-dense armor Leviathan was made out of. In it, there was a black orb the size of a softball, glowing faintly in the otherwise absolute darkness. A pocket several millimeters thick surrounded the orb, before I drove my arms around what could only be the core.

The flesh around me healed over my face and neck until I could no long see, but I still felt the core around me. Leviathan's flesh was smooth like a whale's, but the core was like hot and cold, electric sandpaper to the touch. My body was entombed within the extradimensional tissue around me, but my arms still encircled the core. I was unsure whether me getting to this point implied I was silly strong or Leviathan was silly durable. Probably both, now that I thought about it.

It was time to test the limits of our conceptual bullshit. I squeezed, my arms an unstoppable force against the immovable core. I flexed my chest and contracted my biceps as far as was biologically possible. I never grew tired, so I could keep slowly applying more and more force to the core. Leviathan was shaking now, trying to futilely stop me. I refused to desist, and squeezed until my face tightened from the strain. I no longer used my flight, holding Leviathan no longer a priority for me. I could feel him moving us at incredible speeds, perhaps even faster than I could move, but he could not dislodge me. There was no where for him to go, no where for me to go. The only course of action left was to end his life now.

The core cracked from the ridiculous amount of force spread over the surface area of my arms. I ignored the constant push and pull of inertia as Leviathan repeatedly slammed into what I assumed was the sea floor. I pulled as tight as I could physically achieve, augmented by my own field, to the point where I could feel the spider web of cracks branching around its surface. People were counting on me, so fuck the entities and their dimensional bullshit.

I would win. I had to win.

I kept up the pressure. My arms gradually shifted closer through space-time in relation to my chest before there was a horrible noise like a million glass windows shattering at once. The core ceased to exist soon after, and my unsuspecting wrists slammed into my pectorals. Motion ceased almost immediately, and I took a mental breather due to the still-melting ice inside my respiratory system.

I had finally finished it. An Endbringer was dead, something huge here, but there was more to be done. I twisted my body, and even without any leverage I forced my self upright and outward away from the core. The skin parted much easier than before, and without the constant healing I burrowed my way out of Leviathan's body. In true Alien fashion, I emerged from a hole in his stomach. I could only trace his outline now, the light from his eyes gone. The cold seawater around us was utterly silent, a stark contrast to a few minutes previous.

I drug his corpse upwards off the floor, until the water shifted from black to blue. My head surfaced above the Pacific ocean when I realized I had no idea where I was. I took myself and the corpse in my hand to the lower atmosphere, where I finally found the west coast in my vision while I hit my stomach and exhaled the water out of my lungs. Leviathan had put us close to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so I lined us up with the city and went back into the water; a statement must be made. It took two or three minutes, even at the speeds I was travelling, before the outline of the shore appeared. I slowed down and placed Leviathan over my back. I moved underwater so as to create a visible bulge just under the surface.

I gradually slowed down further until we had come to a stop just as we breached the water just like he had done at the start of the fight. Leviathan's head hung limply over my shoulder, and I let him fall down on the beach like some kind of demonic-beached whale. The capes preparing to attack instead froze at the sight of the dead Endbringer. Legend, Eidolon, and Alexandria advanced forward, stopping a few paces away. Eidolon's face was unreadable within his mask, Alexandria looked past me at the corpse, likely to verify that it was real, and Legend walked forward slowly. He stood next to me, and crouched down in front of Leviathan's asymmetrical face. He reached out a hand, almost gently, as if to prove it wasn't a dream, before ultimately deciding to not touch the Endbringer. He turned to me and visibly swallowed, his voice thick with emotion.

"It is over?"

"Yes." For now, I wasn't going to kill his moment. A bundle of verifications from the wristband came through that this actually was Leviathan. Protectorate thinkers I suspected.

He visibly wiped a tear from his eye, and I could not find fault in him for it. He had known many people that died to the carcass at our feet. He rose in the air and shouted for all the capes to hear.

"Leviathan is dead!" A loud cheer filled the air at that.

Many capes openly wept or high fived, but others cried in sadness for the corpses at their feet. I saw several bleeding bodies covered over the area, and recalled those killed in front of me. I felt ill; I never dealt well with blood. Hell, the last time I tried to donate blood I passed out during the preliminary test where they just painlessly prick your finger. The memories kept replaying over and over in my mind, so I reverted to old habits, drop to your knees and take deep breaths while reciting song lyrics in your head.

Legend dropped back down and placed a hand on my shoulder, worry in his tone and face.

"Are you all right?" He looked like he wanted to say more, but held himself in check.

I gave him a shallow nod and steeled myself.

"Physically. I'm just unaccustomed to this," I gestured to the dead, far away down the beach.

He looked where I was pointing, before understanding dawned on him. He nodded sympathetically,

"This was your first Endbringer fight, wasn't it?" I only nodded.

"Then I can say with absolute certainty, " he continued, "that I have never seen a better performance for a first time." He smiled then, and I couldn't help but give a grim chuckle at that.

"Forty-seven dead, " he answered the question I wasn't sure I wanted to know, "Believe it or not, this is one of, if not the lowest number of casualties ever received during an Endbringer battle. Today was one of the good days, and the Protectorate can't thank you enough… I can't thank you enough."

He hugged me then, wet costumes and all. I reciprocated the movement awkwardly before he wiped another tear out of his eye.

"I'm sorry, this is just an emotional moment for me, " he gave a short laugh while Eidolon and Alexandria approached us, "you said your name was Zeruel?" I nodded, which he returned.

"You're not currently affiliated with the Protectorate at the present time," I wasn't surprised he knew, " but have you considered joining?"

I chose to politely decline his recruitment offer.

"I have, and I've decided to remain independent for the foreseeable future due to… personal reasons. However, I'm not adverse to working with the Protectorate in the future."

He gave me another smile then and didn't press the issue at all.

"I understand more than you think. I'd encourage you to join, and I'm more than willing to talk to you about the specifics if you change your mind. I, and I suspect many others, would like to speak with you later about what you've done today, but, for now, enjoy yourself. You've done a wonderful thing. " He gave a short wave and flew off to assist with the current cleanup.

I turned to the other two members of the Triumvirate. Eidolon remained transfixed on the broken corpse of Leviathan while Alexandria addressed me.

"Impressive work."

"The situation isn't as advantageous as you might believe." There can be no pretense of ignorance here. Today proved I'm on a timetable.

"I need to speak with you, both of you," I amended as Eidolon turned his gaze to me, "about the nature of Endbringers, the golden man, and Cauldron's operations."

Her eyes instantly narrowed and sharpened over to the black material of my morphsuit that covered my eyes. An Endbringer died today, but more would be coming. There were preparations to make and plans to share. We earned a victory here today, but at what cost? The city in front of me lay devastated from the damage of excess dihydrogen monoxide, and there were more than a few dead from the few minutes the fight lasted. Forty-seven capes dead, and I suspect thousands-perhaps tens of thousands-of civilians perished. More Endbringers were on the way. There was no time for celebrating.

The battle was ours, but there was still a war to be fought.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Interlude 1**

Alexandria watched the familiar, white outline of a door appear on the opposite end of the room. Out from it, Doctor Mother walked out with a frown on her face. The Doctor took in The Number Man, Contessa, and herself sitting around the table before deciding to take a seat near the end.

"I recently received word of what happened today. Is it true?" the Doctor asked, a look of disbelief on her face.

Her statement was vague when out of context, but it was easy enough to piece together her intent.

"Yes." No matter what the Doctor was referring to, that simple statement covered all possible bases.

The Doctor's look of skepticism faded only slightly after her confirmation. Alexandria couldn't blame her for it either. She was there, and she could still scarcely believe an Endbringer had died. The Doctor looked thoughtful, no doubt thinking of the possibilities.

"Eidolon told me he revealed knowledge of Cauldron's existence just after the fight, and that you agreed to meet with him today."

Alexandria gave a nod of confirmation.

"Eidolon should be bringing him here soon. He spoke to us only briefly, but he seemed intent to inform us about the Endbringers and Scion. He also indicated he wanted to discuss Cauldron's operations. I am, however, unsure as to what he was referring to specifically."

The frown remained etched onto the Doctor's face.

"Do you believe bringing him here is a wise course of action?"

She had considered the risks, but the potential gain was too much to ignore.

"I have, but I didn't see any particular animosity towards any of us. It's certainly possible he can control his biology to the extent that he spoofs kinesics, but his knowledge of certain obscure pieces of information implies that, at minimum, he understands the threats we face and why we're necessary."

The Doctor's face settled into a more neutral expression while The Number Man was busying typing away on his laptop.

"I see. I suppose we can withhold that conversation until Eidolon and… Zeruel are here. I find myself curious as to how exactly he managed to kill an Endbringer in the first place."

"Two, " The Number Man spoke up, eyes never leaving the laptop, "He targeted and killed the Simurgh four hours and three minutes after Leviathan's confirmed death. He then crucified her corpse and placed it on top of the Empire State Building."

Contessa remained silent as The Doctor's skepticism returned once more.

"Two Endbringers in one day," she shook her head slightly before looking directly at Alexandria, "You were present during the fight. How was Leviathan's death achieved?"

"Zeruel seemed capable of ignoring the durability Endbringers normally demonstrate. His arm was able to pierce straight through Leviathan all the way to the shoulder, and, given the force required, we suspect he possesses multiple breaker powers as a means of doing so. He was capable of physically moving Leviathan, resisting hits in return, and moving at speeds not yet recorded on any movers previously."

"His limits are not yet known, but he showed no difficulty moving Leviathan into both orbit and the Pacific Ocean as well as fighting in those environments for several minutes at a time."

The Number Man clicked a few more keys before turning his laptop towards the other three people in the room. On it was a tinker-recorded video of a fire trail shooting into the sky, Leviathan and Zeruel hidden by a cloud of smoke. It continued until it was almost invisible near the upper atmosphere.

"If you look at the time when his communicator could no longer track his position due to his altitude, it becomes apparent his average velocity during the ascent was 9753.58 meters per second, or just over 21, 814 miles per hour," The Number Man finished with the same self-satisfaction he always seemed to have when speaking of numbers.

"A very high brute and mover rating then," the Doctor murmured quietly.

Alexandria continued off The Number Man's analysis.

"We're uncertain as to what his limits are for durability, but given the levels of physical strength displayed, he would qualify for a tentative 10 in brute, and an easy 10 in mover. Both may increase with more information in the future. As far as his breaker rating is concerned, he was able to ignore the effects of friction down on the ground. He also appeared to be able to extend this effect to others. When he moved capes out of harm's way during the fight, they neither suffered damage from air friction, nor the sudden acceleration."

She paused to take in a breath,

"As to a possible thinker rating," her lips settled into a frown, "we are unsure. At minimum, it is reasonable to assume he has reaction times proportional to his speed, but anything more than that can only be theorized. He was able to identify and ask for Legend's ward, Flechette. It was also revealed during the fight that the effect her power places over her projectiles can pierce through Endbringers. It is possible that this and his knowledge of Cauldron were gained through a precognitive power, or it could be something else entirely."

The Doctor gave a cautious nod at the information. It was a risk to meet all at once, but if Zeruel wanted to do damage, there were worse ways of going about it. His actions on the beach also indicated an aversion to death.

"Eidolon also mentioned Leviathan's… erratic behavior during the fight. What do you make of it?"

Alexandria was still figuring out that part.

"Leviathan demonstrated new abilities as well as more powerful known ones. Either he has grown stronger, or he was holding back all this time," she said with no small amount of bitterness. Leviathan appeared to have been toying with them in all the previous fights. She just needed to know why.

"Leviathan seemed particularly fixated on Zeruel the entire fight. The possibility he saw him as a threat makes the most sense in hindsight. Even the death of other capes in the fight seemed to be the result of collateral damage or Leviathan trying to distract him. We still do not know the exact reason for the behavior change, only that Zeruel was the cause."

The Doctor slowly nodded, eyes flickering to Contessa briefly.

"I asked Contessa not half an hour ago why she hadn't picked him up. She revealed he is blind to her power. This is most unfortunate, but there are certain benefits to this trait."

The woman mentioned spoke up, shaking her head slightly.

"He is not there to me," she said quietly, "it is a disconcerting feeling."

Alexandria felt there was more to that statement than first appeared, but she gave an agreeing nod to both Contessa and the Doctor.

"He appears blind to specific types of precogs. Any attempts by Protectorate thinkers to gleam information off him after the fight were met with almost nothing of use in terms of future actions, but certain emotions and ideas could be read off his body language."

The Doctor folded her hands on the table and absentmindedly tapped a finger on the surface.

"Could he be like Eidolon then?" her mouth twisted into a thoughtful frown, "Could he be the one?"

Alexandria only gave a shrug in response. One of the double doors at the end of the room opened to admit the final two people invited to the gathering. The parahuman that they were meeting for walked through the door first with a stack of folders and paper in his hands. Eidolon walked through it after, closing the door and looking tired even through his uniform.

Zeruel's costume was an indication to her that he was very new to the cape scene. The material was of low quality and was clearly not made for his specific size. Excess cloth bundled on top of his head, shoulders, waist, and the white infinity symbol adorning his chest-though finely stitched-was quite obviously sewn by hand. All in all, it was a reminder to her that experience still sometimes lost in the face of sheer power, just like many of the villains she had captured when she first made her debut on the cape scene.

He paused for a second, seemingly scanning the room in an instant, before he walked to the end of the table opposite Doctor Mother while Eidolon took a seat on her right. He placed three nondescript, manila folders on the table and began shuffling papers into each of them. Curiously, she noted the fabric over his right fingers was particularly empty. She assumed the missing mass was explained by a previous injury. He remained silent while he reorganized the files before him, so the Doctor took the opportunity to begin.

"Hello, I would like to thank you for coming here. I am Doctor Mother, the founder of Cauldron. With me here today are The Number Man, Contessa, Alexandria, and Eidolon," she stated, pointing to each respective person in turn.

Zeruel did not react sharply to any of the names. Alexandria would have bet money he already knew everyone in the room, but the Doctor was big on formalities.

"I gave my name as Zeruel earlier. So," he cut any future introduction short, looking around the room, "I believe we're here to discuss how to kill a god."

"You're speaking of Scion," the Doctor stated.

He gave a confirming nod at that.

"Yes, among other things. I've been thinking today. Quite a bit actually, so I decided to write down some potential plans," he gave a gesture towards the three folders.

He pulled a pen out from one of the folders before writing in black ink on the folders themselves. He then labeled the first folder _Endbringers_, the second _Scion_, and the last one _Assets_. He then placed the pen down and paused, looking over the three folders.

"I'll show you these in a few minutes," he seemed to reach a conclusion, "without proper context some of these would be confusing at best."

He crossed his hands and leaned back in his chair, set in his decision. He hesitated then, before reaching up to his neck with both hands and gripping his costume. Alexandria almost thought he had a zipper there, but instead he cleanly tore the material in a line across most of his neck before grabbing the material behind his head and pulling it over and away from himself. She recognized the action for what it was, a show of trust. He had unmasked in front of them….

The first thought she had was that he was young. His face reminded her of her own before she put her makeup on in the mornings. His hair was brown and short, but what drew her attention were his green eyes that seemed focused on everything and anything in the room with a sort of unnatural precision. Other than that, he appeared decidedly average and not at all like a cape who had killed Leviathan. She gave a glance at Eidolon out of the corner of her eye. They were the only other people with masks on in the room, and she would follow his lead here. He hesitated momentarily before removing his own iconic mask and lowering his hood.

She followed suit, watching as Zeruel's face remained unchanged while his eyes instantly honed in on the small scar over her glass eye. It was not an uncommon occurrence with the few people she met unmasked for the first time. She watched him swipe a single hand through his hair to fix its changed position before folding his hands in his lap again and fully enjoying the ergonomic chair he sat in.

"I told you two, " he indicated with his folded hands towards Eidolon and Alexandria, "earlier I would tell you about Scion and the Endbringers, so perhaps it would be best to start with the golden man himself, though… that's certainly a broad subject. Do you want me to start somewhere specific?" he trailed off with a raised hand, looking around the room.

Alexandria decided to speak up.

"Perhaps it would be best to start with what exactly Scion is…" she left the statement open for him to speak up again.

He nodded again, repositioning the _Scion _folder so it was facing him before staring at the letters.

"As good a place to begin as any. If I were to simplify what he is, I would say Scion is an extradimensional organism, an apex predator, and confirmation of alien life. Scion's species-whom I shall refer to as the entities-exist trying to counter entropy. They seed host planets with what they call shards-I believe you call them agents-as a sort of mutualistic delegation. Hosts receive the superpowers you are all familiar with, and in return their shards record and encourage the usage of their powers. The entities themselves are not overwhelmingly creative in any sense because they don't have to be, other species do the work for them. Several hundred years of data recording pass, and then the cycle is complete and the entities will leave, destroying that planet in every universe within this section of the multiverse…"

There was something unnatural about the way he spoke that was somewhat distracting from the message he was trying to convey. Alexandria couldn't quite point at any single issue, but it occurred to her that several things were subtlety-inhuman about him. He spoke very rapidly, which wasn't abnormal in and of itself, but, rather, it was his lack of breakage in speech that alerted her to the small differences. His breaths were taken in at high speed, such that he could continuously express information without pausing for air at any point or overly-changing tone. His pupils were far too small-she could clearly see the majority of the green irises underneath-in relation to the light levels of the room they sat in, and she could just barely spot a minor blurring that represented his constricted pupils scanning around the room rapidly.

His speech had multiple problems that were rather difficult to describe accurately. The continuous droning was the most apparent, but there were other deviations from normal speech patterns. Certain words were empathized unusually, and that gave the distinct impression of an unusual accent. Alexandria had heard almost every accent on the planet in her career, but this one was unique. It sounded almost artificial because of its uniformity, the way he pronounced some syllables faster and slower than others in a manner that left almost unperceivable pauses in his words. Most people at least pronounced the same word differently due to human error, this was more akin to an emotional computer reading a statement. It was curious and informative to her, that he could control his muscles so acutely but at such odd, seemingly random times. Indeed, the minute differentiations in length were likely unnoticeable to normal people, but she was anything but normal.

He was far too still. The way he sat at that moment, from the facial expressions-or lack thereof-to the absence of micro-muscle movements she normally saw in people, gave him more of an appearance of a talking statue than a person. His lips moved only as far as necessary, and she went over her memory to verify that he had not blinked once while he was talking. He had an unnerving resemblance to Scion that, if she was being honest with herself, put her on edge. She carefully controlled her own body movements to relax into her chair. The same second her body slowly moved back into her chair, his eyes shifted over to her instantly. She blinked, and at once a different person sat before her.

He blinked in return, and seemed to fully relax into the chair. Subtle twitches were present on his body, as well as the minor movement limbs made to indicate a person was alive. She could actually see the expansion his lungs made while his eyes left her to scan the room all in that same second. She was almost convinced she had a faulty memory, and that Zeruel had always been like that, but only almost. It was an interesting game they were playing.

"…and so, that's how Eden crashed on Earth, where you," he pointed a single finger at the Doctor, "killed ended her life."

Alexandria snuck a glance at the others in the room. They did not seem to have reacted to anything that she had seen. Indeed, she doubted if they even saw the changes in the first place, or at least to the same extent she saw them. Contessa was the only other person in the room that looked uncomfortable, though Alexandria saw she was disguising it well. She had looked that way the moment Zeruel had walked in, something Alexandria resolved to ask her about later. Zeruel had seemed to finish briefing everyone of Scion's origins, and so Eidolon and Doctor Mother spoke out at the same time.

"There are more?"

"Can you offer proof?"

An exchange of glances led to a conceding gesture from Eidolon. Just as Alexandria had followed his lead, so did he follow the Doctor's. Zeruel frowned slightly and leaned forward until his elbows rested on the table.

"I admit, many of the things I'm talking about have no physical evidence to prove their existence. All I can do is earn credibility from verifiable elements, and hope your trust extends to the improvable. The extent of my relevant knowledge lies within these folders, but there are some pieces of esoteric information I know that are not written down yet."

He oriented his head towards Contessa for the first time.

"You saw Eden's vision, what she had planned for the future, the conflict they wanted. You told your uncle not to drink or eat for three days and run while you went to Eden's injured body. She restricted your shard in a final act of spite. Doctor Mother solved your indecisiveness by stabbing Eden for you."

He switched his gaze to The Number Man.

"You were originally known as Harbinger, before you and Jack Slash killed King. You still consider him a friend."

He turned to Eidolon next, The Number Man's face had become even more stoic than it normally appeared.

"You were wheel chair bound roughly 30 years ago before Doctor Mother offered you a formula when you failed to jo-"

"I get it," Eidolon grimaced, "I believe you."

Alexandria was somewhat thankful for Eidolon stopping him. She was next in line, and there were things she did not want repeated here. Things that, perfect memory or not, she did not want reminders of.

"Do you?" Zeruel asked Doctor Mother.

"I believe you know a number of things you should not," she responded, frowning slightly, "do you possess a precognitive ability?"

He folded his hands together and settled them in front of his face, hiding his mouth.

"Precognition – knowledge of the future and postcognition – knowledge of past events…. Yes, I can claim I hold knowledge of both past and future events, but not from any hidden mental abilities."

"Not learning that information as a result of your powers implies you were told by someone who did," she found herself reasoning aloud.

His face crinkled into a small smile.

"Quite perceptive, and you would be technically correct. However," his smile disappeared, "the source of my knowledge cannot be relied upon or used as a resource, so we are left with what I remember."

He turned his attention back to Eidolon, something Alexandria recognized as a diversion from the previous topic.

"To answer your initial question, yes, more entities are out there. I don't know how many, but they do exist. Their involvement with this planet in the future is unlikely, so we should focus on the one still living here. Defending against the possibility of more entities in the future is not a poor choice, but the first step is difficult enough as is."

The relief around the room was only mild at Zeruel's declaration. Alexandria diverted the topic back again.

"Speaking of powers, do you mind sharing what yours are?"

He shook his head.

"I don't mind. Brute and mover, as I'm sure you already know. I don't know my own limits yet, but I know they're much higher than other parahumans. I can also ignore several harmful physical laws when applying my strength on objects. My power set is very similar to yours," he said, pointing to Alexandria, "My mind is far faster than a normal human, my senses far better, and my memory perfect from anytime after I received my powers… about a week ago."

The Doctor responded neutrally.

"You've had your powers for a week?"

"Yes. I woke up in a random alley on the eastern seaboard and went west. Leviathan happened and here we are."

The Number Man nodded in affirmation.

"It's no surprise. 71.629% of new capes become known to the Protectorate within the first week."

It made sense. Someone of his power level, going all out, could not hide for very long. It was also a convenient lead in to the next topic Alexandria wanted to know.

"Leviathan's behavior was different today. Do you know why?"

"He wanted to kill me, if that wasn't obvious enough," he replied blandly. "Perhaps he thought I was a threat? Or an anomaly, which I suppose I am."

Uncertainty for both of them. He was uncertain as to the exact cause, and she was uncertain as to the truth of his statement. It looked to her that he was genuine, but his display earlier proved she could not rely on his body language to predict his thoughts.

He continued.

"You and I don't share the same source of power. You have your shard to give you your powers, but I don't have one."

"You don't have a passenger?" Alexandria furrowed her brows in response to such an absurd statement.

"No, but I can also be reasonably sure that I do not suffer from their impulses or energy constraints either."

Alexandria reflexively changed her mental profile of Zeruel then. He wasn't the first cape she had heard claiming their powers came from an alternate source. Many parahumans, generally the ones she filed under mentally insane, asserted that their powers were granted by a deity or magical source. Of course, wouldn't the fact that he knew the source of parahuman abilities imply he was reasonably qualified to state whether or not his source was the same? Assuming that was true, just where did his powers come from, and, more importantly, could it be utilized by others?

Eidolon asked the obvious.

"Then where do you get your powers?"

"I don't know," a small frown played on his lips as an undercurrent of frustration leaked into his tone, "and I don't think I'll ever know. I just know I don't have a shard, as I said. You can scan my brain if you want, you'll find it's completely normal."

"Would you prefer those tests public to the PRT or exclusive to us?"

He turned to answer Alexandria.

"Public with any physical tests. I'll leave the scan release to your judgment. I'll probably be working with them in the future, so, ideally, tests of my ability will cause speculation to cease for both others and myself. Even if I don't work with the Protectorate and PRT for whatever reason, it's more helpful than harmful to know what I can do… for everyone."

"Those can be done at the Los Angeles Protectorate Headquarters if you don't mind. As it is my city, we have the best brute-testing equipment in the Protectorate."

He gave an agreeing nod.

"A sound idea. I have no problem with it."

Well, that was easier than she expected.

"We can schedule it later this week if you're free? I assume you are aware I am the PRT's Chief Director."

"Yes to both."

Zeruel looked down at the folders again.

"I believe we have gotten a little sidetracked from the original topic."

He gave a small flick to the three folders that sent them sliding smoothly down the table until their momentum ceased just in front of the Doctor. The Number Man appeared far too interested in the finger that made that motion while the Doctor opened the _Scion _folder for a few seconds. She gave a curt scan of its contents before glancing questioningly at Zeruel.

"Some of these plans appear a little…" the Doctor visibly paused for something diplomatic and tactical to say.

Zeruel assisted her social efforts.

"Insane? I'm aware. If you check the _Assets _folder, you'll understand why."

The Doctor gave one final glance at the page before switching over the mentioned folder. Alexandria resisted the impulse to lean over the table and try to read what was on the page. She could look over everything later.

"You wish to cancel our experiment with Coil and bring him on board?" The Doctor sent a questioning glance across the table with a curious tone of voice, her face in a mix between thoughtful and surprised, "we have more than a few thinkers already employed."

Zeruel nodded in response.

"Yes, but how many of their powers work on Endbringers and Scion?"

The Doctor's lips pressed into a thin line. Alexandria felt it necessary to confirm what he had just said.

"Calvert's precognition works on Scion?"

Zeruel only nodded in affirmation again. The Doctor did not look happy. Alexandria could easily understand why. The ability to predict previous blind spots was a huge advantage.

"We were unaware," the Doctor began, looking like she was going to ask Contessa for a path after the meeting.

"I don't believe he knows his power works on the Endbringers or Scion either. Regardless, as stated on the first four pages, I would recommended forceful recruitment to ensure the complete cooperation of Coil. With careful use of his power, we have a large number of tries to deal with Scion. It is admittedly less useful against Endbringers, but it would still be a tremendous asset."

The Doctor's dark look diminished after Zeruel spoke, turning into something more akin to mild irritation that she was unable to properly express as he continued speaking.

"And speaking of Endbringers, we should start preparing for those soon."

Those, a plural pronoun contrasting with the singular remaining Endbringer she knew. Alexandria did not like where this was going. She would not of chosen that word without a reason, and the part of her that was tired of having to consider the end of her species hoped he had made a simple mistake.

"Is Behemoth not the only one left?"

The Doctor had caught that verbal specification too. Zeruel saw fit to gift them more things to worry over.

"There were 20 made, now 18 are left. With the deaths of Leviathan and The Simurgh, more Endbringers could and likely will emerge at any point in the future."

Utter silence at the table. Alexandria took a single breath and considered taking the entire day off tomorrow.

"Who made them?" she finally prompted.

"Eden. They were originally created to carefully promote conflict, which I'm sure you can agree they do well. They were awakened and given direction and have been doing this until today."

She idly wondered if he derived any pleasure from casually-issuing statements that changed someone's worldview entirely. If he did, then it was unfortunately well hidden to her.

Still though, the way he left questions unanswered by generating even more questions with his responses was irritating at best. She presumed it was intentional, and the only reasons she suspected he did this was either for his own amusement, a subconscious habit, or, more worryingly, that he did not want to answer the question in the first place. There were many things people were disinclined to do, but that needed to be done nevertheless, and so, with this in mind, she resolved to uncover as much as possible.

"Who awakened them and what were their orders?" She asked, giving no indication of her feelings. It would not do well to alienate an asset as useful as Zeruel at the moment, and, though he had given statements that generated more questions, he had still supplied more information in 10 minutes than they had learned in decades.

"Their order was to be a challenge worthy of fighting. As to who issued the order…"

He gave no name, his eyes slowly roamed from herself to Eidolon on her right.

"…you."

A simple statement, more soft spoken than his other declarations earlier. His tone indicated calm, gentle assurance. The reason why became clear when she finally registered just what he had implicated with his comment. A maelstrom of emotions burst into existence within her heart, and in Eidolon's a second after as he placed his elbows on the table, leaned forward and spoke very quietly.

"What are you insinuating?"

She had rarely seen him mad, even after over a decade of working with him, but there was an ocean of anger that she could almost feel slowly start to bubble underneath him right now.

Zeruel's face remained unchanged. He had to have known the reaction this would provoke in everyone at the table.

"Nothing. Your power often acts subconsciously, yes? What happened… happened, and no one can blame you when you never knew in the first place."

"No," Eidolon shook his head and stood up, jaw muscles visibly tense on his face, "I would never do that. I gave up everything I had in life to help people, " he words were getting progressively louder the longer he spoke, "Everything, and you tell me I'm responsible of millions of deaths?"

He shook his head again as voice leveled out in volume, "I believed you before, but not about this, no. I would never believe you about that."

Zeruel said nothing after Eidolon finished. They both looked each other in the eyes, one practically seething and another with his face carefully blank to the world. Zeruel blinked once before deciding to say 4 simple words.

"You needed worthy opponents."

A short statement, uttered calmly and clearly towards Eidolon as he began to speak up,

"That's…" his words died on his lips as his strings were cut, his attitude taking a diametrically-opposed shift in the opposite direction.

His body hit the chair before he turned his gaze to just in front of him. Alexandria could not see Eidolon's eyes until his stare finally swiveled and remained upon the table in front of him. She saw in corners of his eyes a train crash of thought before they became unresponsive entirely.

She felt immediate concern combined with confusion, distress, and anger. The Doctor appeared concerned, but willing to wait. The Number Man reacted as if he didn't. Alexandria waited to see if Eidolon would respond in any way, but he did not. One second became 5, and 5 became 10 before she reacted, seeing that no one else would.

Hesitating slightly, she snapped her fingers in front of his face and whispered quietly,

"David?"

No response.

Alexandria was reminded of Contessa's presence in the room when she stood up and temporarily looked relieved, fixing her skirt with a single swipe of her hands. She walked around the table under 4 sets of eyes until she ended up on Eidolon's right side. She gently made a circular motion with her left hand around his shoulder before mumbling something even Alexandria could not hear.

His eyes responded though, flickering to his right side before he stood up. Contessa partially supported his weight as she coaxed him out of the room, keeping Eidolon on her left side as she walked as far as possible from Zeruel's chair. As soon as the doors closed, Alexandria turned her full attention to Zeruel. Her patience was worn thin, and she made no effort to hide her anger.

"What was that?" she snapped.

He sighed once before slouching back into his chair.

"That… was a calculated risk. I'd debated whether to say it, but it still seems the best option in hindsight…" he paused and stroked his chin a single time, "What you need to understand is that those 4 words I said? They were originally told to him by Scion in the future. It was a verbal attack, designed to reduce his will completely, so he would no longer fight back. It succeeded, as I just demonstrated. Eidolon threatened Scion so much he actually chose to speak, rather than fight directly."

He shifted back into sitting straight without the use of his arms or legs, subtlety reminding Alexandria that he could fly.

"There are two possible outcomes from this. One," he held up a single finger, "is he loses the will to fight completely, and we have just lost a very valuable player in this most dangerous game. Or, what I feel is more likely, he will overcome this adversity and a dangerous weakness has just been removed from him."

He looked around to the remaining two members of the table.

"I won't presume to know him on a personal level, at least not nearly as well as you three. However, I do know he suffers from an ironic insecurity. His powers have been getting weaker, haven't they?" he asked everyone. Doctor Mother gave him an agreeing nod.

" He fears becoming irrelevant, but there is a solution. I would not of said what I said otherwise. Doctor, could you be so kind as to check the second to last page of the _Endbringers _folder?"

The Doctor, likely assuming there was a point to all of this, opened the folder and pulled out the indicated page. Her eyebrows gradually rose higher as she read the lines down the page.

"You're quite certain of this?"

"It happened once before."

The Doctor nodded absentmindedly at Zeruel's statement before she handed it over Alexandria. She looked over the sheet in an instant before the realization of its contents dawned upon her. It was a set of instructions for charging Eidolon's powers off the living 'shards' of other parahumans. It seemed almost laughably simple compared to the stress she knew Eidolon went through everyday, worrying whether he would be able to do anything when they finally fought Scion. Assuming it was true, the solution also conveniently fixed the problem Zeruel created, or at least brought to light, in the first place.

However, she could not forget the feeling of sadness that pervaded her when she saw Eidolon reduced to such a nearly-catatonic state. She could not agree with the decision, only deal with its consequences. She gently passed the paper across the table to The Number Man as she addressed Zeruel.

"I would appreciate if you informed at least one of us when you intend to enact… similar plans in the future."

For a brief instance, a mildly guilty looked crossed his face.

"I apologize. Circumstances partially forced my hand, " he defended, albeit somewhat-weakly, "I will at least try to inform before acting in the future. Such as plans to rid the Earth of its S-Class threats."

She saw the Doctor's mouth opening on her left, but Zeruel continued instantly, before she could speak out fully.

"I may be jumping the gun here, but, on the assumption that we _can _deal with Scion, it wouldn't be terrible to at least improve the world in the meantime. There's a list of connections between powers inside those folders that, chained together, could successfully kill future Endbringers even if I die. Many S-Class threats have powerful powers yes, but we do not need them against Scion, nor the Endbringers. We do not need them roaming the planet, causing needless chaos."

"All I'm saying," he continued, "is that we should meet and discuss what to do after all is said and done."

"You sound very certain of our collective ability," replied Doctor Mother.

"Knowledge is the most powerful force. You have a plethora of information and infrastructure. I have some useful bits of exotic information about our enemies. We're outgunned, but, well… I like to think we can find a way. As long as my confidence isn't blinding me, I have no problem believing we could accomplish anything we set out to solve. The alternative is we all die, and that's pointless to think about."

"We'll see," Alexandria found herself responding.

It was hard not to worry about… everything really. She worried a lot. How much? She couldn't be certain, but she knew it was far more than she ever wanted. Worries always traded for one another, never ending. Worry over cancer killing her, worry over Hero's death, or worry over her potential death and everyone else's. The cycle had always struck her as never ending. It was always hard for her. She couldn't forget every moment she felt helpless, alone, afraid, as few as those instances occurred these days.

Zeruel gave her a single nod.

"I have nothing left to give. The rest is in those folders."

"I see," the Doctor finally responded. "Once again, thank you for coming. I'm certain your information and help in the future will be invaluable."

A faint buzzing emanated from the Doctor's pocket. She pull out her phone and read a message from its screen.

"If that's all, I need to go speak with Contessa."

She returned the papers to their respective folders. Alexandria only see each page for an instant, but that was enough. There were cross references of powers that could be compatible, ones to investigate, ones Zeruel was certain were useful. Potential uses and categorization. The formatting left it looking rushed, but there was certain a high value on those folders' contents. She had already committed many of the names she saw to memory: _Dragon, Accord, Leet,_ _Panacea, _and more, before she resolved to read more into the folders later.

"Door me." With that, the Doctor vanished from the room with Doormaker's assistance.

Alexandria was left with Zeruel and The Number Man. She found herself standing at the same time as Zeruel with The Number Man following a second after closing his laptop.

"You can create fake IDs, yes?" Zeruel spoke to The Number Man for the first time.

"Yes. They are indistinguishable, even to most governments," he responded factually.

"I'm not from this Earth, and therefore have no legal existence here. Can we work something out for that?"

It was almost expected at this point. Compared to what Zeruel had said earlier, this information-that would be important otherwise-was excluded from the previous conversation of the basis of it having no major value.

"Certainly," he replied as he methodically adjusted his glasses. "It wouldn't take more than 23 minutes. Door me, my office."

The Number Man stepped through the portal without hesitation, seeing the meeting was over at this point. He glanced back at Zeruel.

"I'll be there in one minute."

The Number Man raised a single eyebrow in question, but gave a single nod as he prepared to pull up the appropriate files on his computer while the white, other-worldly portal closed behind him. Alexandria looked to Zeruel in askance for him to explain staying behind.

"You said you wanted to know the next time I did something stupid."

"I do not recall phrasing it that way," she responded carefully.

"True, you said it much more politely, but, regardless, I'm telling you what I plan to do. Kill the Slaughterhouse 9 in about an hour," he admitted far too casually.

She had heard those words before, 17 other times to be exact. All occasions had ended with their owners horrifically mutilated and killed. She had seen Zeruel earlier. His name was fitting for a reason, and there was no denying he was powerful, but in many ways the Slaughterhouse Nine was more dangerous than Leviathan. By all accounts, he should know that. On impulse, she almost wanted to call him stupid directly, rather than indirectly, but that would not of helped his decision-making process. Instead, she sought out more information.

"Why them?"

"Nothing personal, at least in the sense of perceived wrongs towards me personally. It's just a matter of awareness. I'm more aware of the Slaughterhouse 9, so they become the first of many."

"You are aware that our policy is officially hands off?"

"For a certain definition of that phrase, yes. Is that policy necessary when we don't need their 'assistance' with Scion?" he asked in an artificially-innocent tone.

It was interesting how he used the pronoun we. She wondered if that was an attempt at integrating within Cauldron's inner circle or just a subconscious feeling of sharing the burden.

"That's still a fairly large assumption to make."

He grimaced.

"That's fair enough from your perspective, …so all I can do is ask for an extension of your trust here."

She pursed her lips in response, deep in thought. _If _his assumption proved to be correct, then his decision made logical sense to her. It made _moral _sense to her, even after hers had degraded over the years. However, that was all based on his rather large assumption that they could kill Scion, and so in that regard he was correct in saying that if she agreed it would be on a basis of trust. In many ways, she wanted him to be right.

A small part of her wanted him to be wrong, that she had idly sat by and done nothing because it was the right thing to do while others died. She squashed the thought as it arose, a deep sense of shame hidden from everyone but herself. She looked at his face, looking at her's in return, and came to a decision.

"Had I not seen your capabilities earlier, I would have called you foolish," she sighed slightly. "I'll still call you foolish, infact, but not ignorant. Maybe suicidal…"

His face adopted a look of incredulity while she continued.

"Officially, I say that you shouldn't do it. I'm against the idea and told you so. Unofficially…"

Her hand subconsciously moved up to touch her scar and glass eye. She let the movement continue fully after his eyes shifted between her face and hand almost too rapidly for her eyes to compute.

"good luck," she finished.

He smiled then. A genuine small that appeared only for an instant before his face settled onto a neutral expression.

"Thank you. Until next time. I've always wanted to do this."

His eyes left her face to stay at the wall next to him.

"Door me. Number Man's office please."

He moved through the white portal onto more white tile, reaching for the doorknob of The Number Man's office as the doorway closed behind him.

Alexandria turned her attention towards the three folders the Doctor had trust her with. She walked over and gently picked up the folders. Thoughts were racing by her hand, cataloguing every moment of the past half hour. Every second of memory was carefully combed over to inspect for any discrepancies or deceit. She eventually concluded that there was no intent to lie.

Zeruel had believed everything he said, and the majority of it strongly. It hammered the situation down on her. It would have been far easier for him to be wrong, that this could just be a bad dream she could awake from. Before Hero, before, Behemoth, before cancer… there was always so much work to do now.

She sighed for a second time. At least other people could make the excuse that they needed to sleep instead of work.

"Door me."

The room was empty the next second.


	5. Omake 1

**Omake 1: Divergence**

"You're leaving?" A voice asked to my side as I stared into the sky above the planet.

I had spotted her approach long before she stood at rest near me. I saw all the energy used to fold the space between her and myself, the atoms in her body uniformly moving closer to me, the electric signals sent out by her nervous system, the reactions and the catalysts involved in all her body's processes even as I tasted a multitude of emotions: fear, relief, sadness, uncertainty.

A drove of mental threads were spent just to translate the very words she spoke. Her voice sounded so quiet against the enormity of my presence, and I confined myself solely to my physical body within this reality while simultaneously slowing all mental processes to experience reality in the present one final time. How ironic, that such a large effort-even if proportionally the same-was needed just to understand the very words I would have subconsciously comprehended 2 years ago.

Something like that wasn't so simple anymore, though, paradoxically, neither was it complex in any manner. Very few things in the natural world eluded my understanding anymore. I turned to her even as the signals emitted from my body slowed to what felt like a halt, her sentence was finally parsed a quarter of a second before being uttered from her lips.

"Yes." I responded, taking great care to emulate the tones of human speech I had once done subconsciously via micro movements of the air around me. Light was bent around a small portion of my physical mass to give the illusion of speaking while I followed the current course of action.

I faced her and awaited a response. Even with my mind slowed down the air would have felt like syrup as I moved my limbs through it, had I not exerted a small amount of energy to pass my molecules through unobstructed. In the time it took for her lips to move I spent the multiple threads studying her for no reason save to starve off boredom. I observed the blood flow between her veins, the reflections playing in her cornea, and the movement her hair made under gravity. All were viewed in the present while acknowledged in past and future.

"Why?" She asked in what I felt sounded as neutral as possible, regardless of the burning curiosity in her mind.

"Because," I responded slowly. No air passed from my lungless body through my lips, so I payed a portion of my attention vibrating the molecules at the right frequency, "there is nothing left for me here."

I returned my attention to the stars above as she fell silent. One part of my mind noted the beauty of the colors above, so many more than the human eye could perceive. One part noted the beauty of the wind as it blowed around the hill we stood. Another part of my mind saw the beauty in a supernova occurring in the Andromeda Galaxy 2.86 million years from now, and yet one more part saw the beauty in the way the body next to mine sustained itself with such inefficiency.

"What changed your mind?"

I didn't respond for awhile, even by her standards. I broke my gaze from the heavens above to follow a predestined conversation as I had once done impulsively what felt like so long ago. Multiple trains of thought ran at the same time to formulate a proper response to her. I created an answer through searching within all my memories in all states of time. I would never forget them, and so I tried to root out a cause of... everything really. The answer was obvious, regardless of how I felt. Even so, I felt necessary to attempt an explanation.

"I did."

She said nothing, perhaps understanding with her improved mind that I would elaborate, or maybe she didn't. I decided it wasn't important enough to considering reading the physical structure of her brain. The end outcome was the same.

"I decided my neurons were too inefficient spatially, my senses too limited, my perception a hindrance, and it escalated from there." Ten charges a day. Three on physical powers like durability or energy constructs, and seven on mental improvements. Doubling in effectiveness every six months to a year? Timelines fully visible even if you lock yourself out of the majority? You get some preposterous information capacity.

I continued then, ignoring the emotions inside her heart that her expressionless face could not hide from me.

"I broke my chains of humanity, and paid the price of power for my ascension. I hated and feared the uncertainty of the future, and so I worked to fix that through viewing multiple timelines and my own increased understanding of reality."

I manipulated the field holding the atoms I was proxying together so as to give the illusion of a headshake. 

"Countless amounts of data learned and archived… enough that a normal human brain couldn't even conceive of the number of zeroes representing the number of bytes."

I trailed off as I watched the photons of a sunset rush towards our bodies. I observed the bounce they made off the ground and flesh to meet the eyes I didn't need anymore. It's funny; to most, reality is objective (even if far too many think otherwise), but objective can be subjective if I will it so.

"Do you understand how pointless everything is? That's something I never agreed with before. I always thought things mattered if they mattered to you, but that ideology falls apart when you see _everything._"

I bent the light around my superficial mouth to exactly copy a grimace from a man in Russia that just lost his job last week. It wasn't really necessary, but nothing else was anyway.

"You know my senses have extended globally, and fully beyond into space? My powers have been growing for 5 years, right now I see and hear 43,234 different people praying to me for a variety of reasons. You know why I don't answer? It changes _nothing. _I've isolated myself to only a _finite_ timelines in an attempt to preserve my sanity, and it is obvious to me that I was, is, and will be overestimating the number I could comprehend at once."

I suppressed an outflow of energy from myself as a result of my muted agitation to preserve the surrounding landscape.

"When I said I hated the uncertainty of the future earlier? I hate the certainty of it now, just as I've hated living through each picosecond of it. Every single timeline I see ends the same way you know? In this one, after I finish speaking with you, humanity dies 1.6 million years from now due to a widespread civil war. In another, you die before leaving this planet, and in countless others you die in countless other ways, but in the end you all die… and I will sit in this void you call the universe for the next thousand trillion years, alone. I know, because I've already lived through it countless times."

I folded space around us and made it permanent. We were never standing on top a hill in western India, we were always standing on a street in Tokyo. No one but us could tell the difference anyway. A city-wide time stop was put into effect as I walked down the street slowly. 

"I think I've learned that moderation is key to everything, including knowledge. You know what makes this possible?" I waved an arm to the objects frozen in time, "Knowledge of how the universe is organized, or simplified to math as we know it."

I walked up to a random bystander and knocked a hand onto his face.

"You make energy intransmissible to objects in a system via a… well you can think of it as a "shield", and you get something that cannot be affected by physical energy, or at least not without bypassing or brute forcing the shield making the closed system. That's how your body and objects touched by time manipulators like Clockblocker give off the illusion of invulnerability."

I continued walking as the two systems of us and the surrounding city seamlessly merged into one network. City life continued on as normal as I shifted the two of us into a nearby dimension, enabling us to move unimpeded and unperceived through any objects in our path.

"All of that was a convoluted way of saying that the entities had a higher level of understanding in regards to the natural world, and that is what created their precognition. Through trial and error, they found equations that nearly match those of the universe, and inputted learned data to predict the future."

"It's not perfect by any means," I left off as I transitioned us into a Casino in Las Vegas, "but they were almost as accurate as most organisms could realistically achieve. I worked backwards in a way, knowing the equations of life and plugging in all the variables I can see, which is quite the number. The idea that everything is inherently chaotic? That only applies if you don't understand it. It is predictable chaotic, and that's how I can see the end result of living."

That of course wasn't even taking into consideration the potential that Kaleidoscope offered in viewing parallel and alternate timelines. It made The Uncertainty Principle empirically false for me among other things. I folded space again so our next step brought us to a beach in the restored Newfoundland while I waited for her predicted response that would come in 3 seconds.

"Is there a reason you can't go back to your previous state? Before you were burdened with… all this?"

"I have become used to seeing the world this way. If I was to limit myself again," I raised my hand and gestured to the land and water around us, "I don't think I could live the same life."

I found an analogy she would understand,

"It would be like taking away someone's sight as an adult. If they're born blind, they live in peace never understanding just what they're missing. You give them sight? They might very well be overwhelmed by the new sensations, but if they survive that… how could they ever go back to being blind again?"

I moved us to the surface of Mars next, ignoring her brief panic before she realized she could still breathe.

"I hate knowing the future, but I hate not knowing it even more. That only thing that is constant between those is that I hate myself for taking the decision away from me."

She seemed oddly thoughtful then. I didn't bother to read her neurological signals to find out specifically. A quick look revealed that nothing changed from knowing her thoughts.

"Do you regret what you've done?"

She seemed surprised by my question, and I assumed she was thinking about all the decisions she'd made in her life as I observed the lack of life around us.

"Yes... I..." She struggled with whatever she was saying. Looking into my expressionless face for something. She seemed to find what she was looking for, nodding her head slightly,

"I've made choices I thought were necessary, that I now realize weren't." I could tell she felt that was hard to say. Perhaps for pride and another reason, it was hard to care these days.

I'd decided to leave recently. There was nothing more for me here nor anyway. Africa was my own empire engaged in an unofficial cold war with the rest of the planet. I would leave soon by any standard, but, before I went, I felt the necessity to warn her against what I had done, even I as resumed my gaze upon the sky. It may have been the final act of humanity left within me.

"I don't want anyone else to end up like me," I began, slowly and quietly. "I have more in common with Scion than I do the race I once belonged to." I held my arms out as if encompassing the whole earth, and in fact was a moment later as we moved to the moon.

"I arrived here 5 years ago, and thought I could do everything. I was apathetic before all this because I couldn't do anything, so why bother caring for the suffering of others? It only took a month for the Endbringers to be eliminated. Scion followed a month later along with a majority of the planet's threats. From there, I wanted to fix the world in my image." I couldn't feel bitterness, not anymore, but I made sure to express that in my artificial tone. Others could not make the mistake I made. Let them suffer and benefit from their own ignorance.

"I did, but I ruined any potential of that by seeing the future. Tell them what I said here tonight, if nothing else. I don't want anyone becoming like me."

She stayed silent throughout my request, as close to begging as I could become. She finally deigned to answer when she understood I was done speaking,

"Then you've decided?" 

"The point of life has been a debated topic for thousands of years. However, most people agree that learning new things keeps it interesting. I ruined that for myself, and, though I might acknowledge a division between all-knowing and all-understanding, I believe that I have extinguished any purpose for myself here. I already knew the outcome of this conversation 50 years in the future and 1000 years in the past."

I graced her with moving us back to the planet, inside a peaceful forest in northwestern Canada.

"My time is up, ended of my own volition."

I began expanding my awareness once more. Feeling the entirety of the galaxy around me: the life, the atoms of the gas giants, the molecules of the burning stars, everything was revealed before my all-seeing eyes. She must of sensed the change of energy, because she began speaking rapidly,

"Regardless, thank you, " She half shouted, but I barely heard her regardless. My mind was literally everywhere else at the moment, "for everything you've done," she exhaled finally, sensing this would be the last time we spoke.

I oriented my head and body towards her completely even as the particles of my feet and legs began shooting off into the space around us, no longer constrained by my will.

I stared at her one final time. Nodding my head slightly to her in acknowledgment of her thanks, I felt vaguely satisfied for the first time in what felt like eternity. I could not predict what would happen next, something that sent me into a frivolous excitement. My body expanded endlessly into the present universe as I fully took Kaleidoscope off its leash and became one with everything, feeling true peace for the first time.


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: I need someone else to deal with this.**

I exited from a portal 2 miles above South Dakota with a legal existence, curtsey of The Number Man. Being directly in his office insured that I didn't have to wait, but it was disturbing how easily he put in information that could or could not have been fake. Information that, according to him, would withstand anything inspection that wasn't a top-level government investigation.

He had given me a cell phone as well, acknowledging that future contact was inevitable. It contained an important list of numbers that incentivized me to protect the phone with my body at all costs. I browsed through it in the hallway just before to examine its contents. It had the numbers of everyone at the meeting and Legend, but it also had a huge contact list for the "support group" of the Protectorate. Everything from top-rate costume designers, costume makers (that I intended to take advantage of), therapists, lawyers, personal doctors, and many more occupations that I had not consciously thought of as involved with the Protectorate. There were even several teleporters listed if you needed a fast movement service….

I assumed, in part, that not everyone in the Protectorate had access to these at all times. But, I am quite certain they would at least receive a portion of the benefits every so often. I dislike guessing in general, but I had spent the near entirety of my day yesterday researching the world and procrastinating on my procrastinating.

And what a world this was…. There were so many subtle variations to history which lead to the vastly different world I can see today. A materialist analyzing this world would spend a lifetime just trying to understand the results of specific divergences. For example, the superpredator prediction of the 90s was a far stronger political movement with the advent of parahuman teenagers. This of course lead and built up to a far harsher prison system for all youth by extension.

There were increased penalties and no age discrimination among kill orders as but one of many differences, assuming the parahuman teenager in question refused to cooperate with the Protectorate. There are more divergences, such as the USSR having dismantled in 1987 rather than 1991 as a result of an earlier, and I suspect partially-shard driven, August Coup that involved a lot of parahuman infighting. The small difference in time precluded several important diplomatic meetings between the US and the USSR which resulted in even worse Russian-American relations and economic strength post-Cold War. The history itself was fascinating, but, as much as I love history, I needed to spend time understanding the mechanics of this new world. The most obvious new element was the parahumans.

From what I have seen, the arbitrary line of unwritten rules between capes also extends to the legal system as a whole when it involves them. Rogue and hero-aligning capes can register as individual legal entities that were tax free for obvious reasons. Proof of your power, as recognized by the Protectorate, established you for parahuman personhood. It was a clever way to further intertwine the unwritten rules within society.

Parahumans could be sued separate from their secret identities this way. The enforcement of the parahuman defendant, however, was almost always left in the hands of the Protectorate, who would then-in most cases-pay the plaintiff their awarded cash for judged damages and enact punishment on the parahuman for probably violating one of their rules.

Then there was the entire logistical nightmare of combining the bank accounts of capes with their non-cape identities. As far as I can tell, it is simply systematically ignored in such a manner that leaves me doubtful Cauldron isn't involved. Random cape Joe Shmoe can just get $100,000 for turning in a kill order, and transfer it to Shmoe Joe's civilian account with no oversight from the bank. The records are obviously there that this cape just got x amount of money and moved it to a normal account that doesn't handle those kinds of funds, but there is no involvement beyond recording the transfer. The unwritten rules are perhaps more invasive than I initially believed.

Those benefits weren't available to villains though, but both groups still respected certain rules, and breakers of those rules were generally hated by both sides in the game (unless of course money was on the line). You break the rules enough here and you get a kill order slapped on your head, which encouraged any and all people, capes and noncapes, villains, heroes, and rogues, to do their best to kill you. Successfully completing a kill order even gave you a temporary legal pardon. Even if you were a convicted parahuman pedophile that had just escaped prison, if you completed a kill order you could walk right up to a Protectorate help desk and demand your cash prize, and they were legally unable to do anything but hand you your money and allow you to walk away.

It brought bounty hunting back into popularity as an actual job. A select few people back in my world managed to live solely off bounties, and many of the hunters here had alien powers backing them up. However, some groups were considered off limits to the professionals.

The group I was hunting is largely considered a no go, since all the hunters on their case end up spending a very agonizing day reconsidering their life choice. The Slaughterhouse 9 were unforgiving to anyone, and I imagine people trying to kill them was the status quo at this point in time.

There were several privately-owned websites and a single one by the US government that tracked certain threats like the Slaughterhouse 9. It was in many ways reminiscent of tornado warnings. The government and protectorate could not predict with 100% certainty which city the Slaughterhouse 9 would visit in a given timeframe, but they could predict the general area and issue a warning to the surrounding region. Like tornado warnings though, without solid confirmation most people could not afford the cost of evacuation, whether due to supplies or job commitments. It was sad… that it just became a fact of life. The weather is seen as an uncontrollable force to all non-HAARP believers, and here the Slaughterhouse 9 were thought of as equal to a force of nature in 2011. Something that could change its patterns, but never really went away.

I couldn't even disagree with that thought. The 9 had survived more than a decade under Jack Slash's leadership both against mundane people and parahumans all the way up to the Triumvirate. Any parahumans capable of killing the 9 were, by large, also large with regards to collateral damage, and they would never be authorized to strike. The Slaughterhouse 9 weren't immune to large scale, mundane military force either, but no politician would tank his or her career by authorizing or advocating an intense bombing strike on American soil.

And the demoralizing part was that the 9 were not unique globally. They were powerful, and they were public enemy number 2-in North America-after the Endbringers, but I suspected a large portion of their fame was their effect on the first world. There are and were many other groups in the third world doing the exact same thing with similar or even debatably-higher kill counts. Places like South America and Africa had groups just like the 9 running around doing equally cruel acts against their fellow man, it was just never reported by the American-centric news networks.

Well… those networks could report the death of the Slaughterhouse 9 tonight, or tomorrow; it was 3am in the central time zone. By all accounts, the 9 were presumed to still be in the city of Westwood, South Dakota (to which I frustratingly had no reference as to whether it existed in my home universe or not) that they had initially attacked around 8pm, and so that was where I was heading, given that the Door was about a 2 miles up and away from the small town.

Even from this distance I could tell that something had struck the city. There were obvious smoke trails that you didn't need enhanced vision to perceive, but there were also holes in… everything really. I realized what I was seeing soon after, it was that all the glass was just… missing… missing from its proper place really as the shards littered the ground. Blood, waste, and human beings also littered the ground in such a manner that left me feeling partially ill. My eyesight was advanced enough to detect them with the relative viewpoint of being right in front of them, giving me a first-row ticket to some morbid shit.

I dropped to a gas station below and placed my new phone on the roof while I put on my torn mask. There were roughly 12,000 people in this city (well… were), and that was enough to give me pause. My eyes could not see any members of the 9, but it was late, and they were unlikely to be roaming around the streets. Luckily for me, I had another sense I could rely on. I fully concentrated on my ears as I reflexively winced from the large influx of frequencies.

Even in what was considered a small city at night, there were thousands upon thousands of different noises being constantly generated by a whole array of objects and people. I closed my eyes and oriented my head to pick direction while I chose which sound to pursue. There were dozens that might be of interest to me, but I did not have to time, or, rather, other people did not have the time, to pursue false leads. I went with the highest probability of conflict, a scream.

I had not spent any special time towards locating sounds, but I can tell that you I felt confident in the source being roughly 2 miles away, just to my left. It took less than a second to accelerate to something approaching my maximum speed and less than 5 to reach the new area. It would have been less than 1 second, but along the way were a few people I found still alive. I picked up-quite literally-15 people on the way over and deposited them in a nearby intersection. Some appeared delirious from blood loss among cuts from glass while others were unconscious, but all had beating-if erratic-hearts. I wanted to help them, but doing something might have worsened the injury, and unfortunately stalled me.

Emergency services were unlikely to respond, not that I could blame them. A hospital sending an ambulance into a city occupied by the 9 was just giving them an obvious opportunity to kill even more people. Instead, I inspected the newest area to better identify my surroundings. It was one of the areas still on fire. I trusted my ears once again as I heard heavy breathing and groaning coming from a two story house on my right.

Entering revealed three people throughout the structure: a boy and two adults I presumed to be his parents. The boy was young, about 3 or 4, though thankfully appeared physically unharmed. He was crying into his father's chest while I moved his mother outside, severe burns on her arms and face as she lay unconscious. I moved the boy outside the smoldering remains of his home soon after, and, before he could react to the change in scenery, gently moved his father outside as well. The older man had what I believed to be second and third degree burns on most of the upper body on his left side. He wheezed once as I delicately set him down, and he placed his working arm around his son as I moved towards another panicked yell around the street corner.

A half second later and I made first contact with a member of the 9. A woman, facing away from me, laughing as she shot fireballs just to the side of a panicked older man. The scorch marks on the ground indicated she had been getting progressively closer with her shots, and the man only had a few more feet to go before the wall behind him blocked him off. He knew this, strained as his breathing was, and the woman, who could be no one other than Burnscar, knew it too. She slowly started to raise her hand and I _thought_. The world moved further and further into a state of perpetual slow motion as I entered a new state of purgatory between conscious thought and reality. Her arm was moving so slowly to me that I had may as well of had the equivalent of an hour to decide what to do.

It was something I had been putting off thinking about. I had never killed anyone before. Indeed, there was a time, when I was younger, where I would have mindlessly advocated the death of anyone firmly in the "I believe they deserve it" box. That view had flipped for me as time went on; my regard for human life rose. It was so easy to judge someone else through a screen, computer or television… so easy to form an opinion without all the relevant information. I was hesitant in a way. I viewed change through the lens of dialectical materialism, and applied here it meant that people like Burnscar do not go from a state of what is perceived as "good" to what is perceived as "evil" without having their behavior influenced by gradual, previous material conditions.

In this specific instance, it meant shard mindfuckery among other things. She was addicted to her power, as I understand it. I didn't even know what her life was like before this, and here I was making a permanent judgment. It was shitty, and so were the things she did to people. I didn't want to kill her, honestly. I'd like to plan rehabilitation for people like Burnscar, so they could perhaps atone for what they have done and contribute back to society. It helped humanize them in my mind, which was probably not what I needed here.

Unfortunately, I did not have the resources to support such an action. I had no way to monitor her, no way to get a therapist to agree to treat her, and no way to ensure she wasn't killed or Birdcaged, or, hell, to ensure she didn't kill others. I could theoretically get Contessa to agree to it, but just the sheer difficult of that and the effort required firmly shut that down in my mind. It made _me _feel like a bad person; I was giving her the ultimate insult you could give someone, that their lives weren't even worth the difficulty of saving.

My logic won out over my ideals. Her arm had moved from a 80 degree angle to the ground to an 75 degree angle, but it moved no further. I placed my index finger and thumb at the top of her neck and joined the two digits together. It was the equivalent effort of pressing a button on a remote control, but it resulted in the vertebrae beneath the skin exploding-quite violently-like a crushed sugar cube. I also formed the field over my left thumb into a spike and pierced it straight through her chest and heart, fast enough for my suit to remain free of blood.

The old gentlemen who was forced to come to terms with his life was still standing, and therefore did not need my help anymore beyond being relocated with the others I had helped. I placed Burnscar's still warm, still alive, likely still conscious body at a separate intersection. Her heart had only just caught on to the fact that there was a finger-sized hold missing from it. I left her facedown on the asphalt, unwilling to look her in the eyes and give myself a memory I was incapable of forgetting.

I moved to the nearest rooftop and took in more sounds. The 9 had entered this town fairly late in the evening. Due to its small size, it was probable that they were just passing through and decided to stay the night, wiping a town off the face of the Earth as if it was a normal hobby. It was almost certain that some members were asleep right now, but there were some in the group that didn't need to sleep. I turned my head towards another panicked, pain-filled yell. Even if it turned out to not be a member, it was still someone that could be relocated to relative safety.

It turned out to be a man trapped underneath some rubble. I had no idea how the home had collapsed on him without the 9 noticing him, but neither of us should question such fortune, if you ignore that this whole situation is the opposite of fortune. I carefully extracted him from the wall that had fallen and crushed his legs before I placed him with the others I had gathered.

I followed my ears once more and ended up on top of a single-story home. There, in the yard, was a man pitifully trying to limp away. Cuts covered his body, but there was far too much blood on the ground to solely belong to him. I noticed in the corner of the yard was a pile of corpses. I swallowed and put it in the side of my vision. I could not forget I had just seen a dozen men and women that had been tortured to death.

The cause of it all sat in the center of the yard, watching the man. I had no intentions of figuring out the specifics of what he was; I needed to stop this. Mannequin stood unaware of me until a car smashed into him faster than a speeding bullet, crushing the undercarriage and his artificial body beneath with a dent in the shape of my body. I didn't know if he even had vital organs, or where they were located, but this solved the problem of precision. If you hit every square centimeter of area, at least some of the force translates into something useful.

The chassis I used completely covered the _I, Robot_ lookalike underneath, but I could make out the blood within slowly flowing outward onto the already-bloodstained grass. I didn't regret doing this, and I was fairly certain this was the best decision I could have made, but I did regret that this was necessary in the first place, that a man who once worked to save the world would be altered and set out and destroy it.

Ignoring the small amount of blood quite literally on my hands, I carefully placed Mannequin's most recent victim back at the intersection that was slowly filling up with people. His immediate need was stopping blood from leaving his body. His danger afterwards would be infection, but a hospital could deal with that.

I listened once more to my surroundings. Hundreds of more sounds were discovered and investigated. The vast majority turned up nothing immediate: a dog here, another injured person there, a stove still on, etc. However, to my right and about half the city's width away, there was the sound of a material dissolving that, when examined, proved fruitful. I moved to enter the home the sound originated from, and the large hole in the side confirmed my suspicions. A massive shape filled out the majority of the downstairs living room, and it could be nothing else but Crawler.

I paused momentarily, his appearance a surprise. I'd never seen a physical appearance so inhuman before, let alone something as warped as Crawler. He was, well… grotesque, monstrous, and creepy as a given, but the most defining characteristic you would think when you see Crawler is that he's fucking huge. He was massive, covered in dark armor, eyes in places that eyes should not be in, and an bunch of limbs that should never go together. He was smaller in the 3 spatial dimensions when compared to Leviathan, but he might very well have outweighed him. Crawler's head, and the many eyes on it, remained transfixed on the television across the room while acid absentmindedly dripped from his face and burned holes in the floor.

He was watching a foreign cooking channel…. I paused even longer as it came as something of a surprise. I figured he would have preferred something more violent, but different strokes for different folks. Dozens of eyes on his left side were slowly rotating to focus on me. It wouldn't be long before he was aware I was here.

I flew directly above him before striking out with my hands extended. With the force of a hurricane, my arms slammed into his back. Crawler's body immediately collapsed to the floor, his limbs unable to support the increased weight. His torso struck the ground and collapsed several feet into it, allowing my hands the ability to plunge into his hardened flesh. I took hold of his insides and resisted the urge to throw up. Leviathan had felt like grabbing slimy leather, but Crawler felt like an actual living creature on the inside.

I rotated to face the night sky and took off with my captive. We were high into the sky before he realized he was in motion. He shouted something to me, lost in the wind, while he tried to pry me off. I was out of the reach of many of his limbs, and the few that could grab me could not stop me. I felt his flesh writhing underneath my hands, trying to repair the damage in the space my hands occupied. I refused to allow that, and kept my grip secure. Several holes opened on his back and began to spray acid towards me.

I kept increasing our altitude, even while moving my body horizontally to try and dodge his spray. My skin was durable enough to withstand any attack he could make, though the inverse was also true. My costume did not share this trait. I had originally thought that my field protected my clothing from any harmful effects, but it seemed that it only applied to kinetic force. Extreme heat, cold, chemical reactions through corrosive substances, and, I suspect, other exotic energy types could still damage anything over my skin.

My breached the atmosphere with nary an indication of our struggle. I oriented my body and accelerated. Faster and faster, the vacuum around me held no power over myself, only serving to augment my movements. I abruptly stopped after a minute of acceleration. Crawler left my tender care at well over twice the speed of the Voyager 2 spacecraft. He twisted his form to face me, and let out a wordless cry, unheard by any mortal beings, as he flew away from the planet. He was destined to eventually be pulled in by the sun's gravitational well. Hopefully the immense pressure and heat would kill him, more so for his sake than mine.

I turned around, watching Earth slowly get farther and farther from me. Frost had formed in the inside of my lungs and throat. Water was evaporating out of my eyes, but I didn't feel any particular loss of fluid; it was being replaced as fast as it was leaving, curious. I observed my hands, now naked to the world with Crawler's help in dissolving my sleeves. My limbs were the normal size, and I didn't feel the effect of embullism inside me right now. This was quite fascinating too me, but I could always experiment later. I had a task to complete.

I refused to allow Earth to run just out of reach, and so I pointed myself towards the planet and found myself back where I started just two minutes ago. The process of advanced human echolation began again. There were still 6 members of the nine left, but they were either asleep or just inactive right now. Still, I could track a heartbeat anywhere in the city, and track I did.

Many sounds were just injured people, and I moved them back towards the main intersection I had chosen. One sound in particular-when I chained the waves of sound together-struck me as a person attempting to yell, yet unable. That particular trail netted the unfortunate jackpot. It was a desolate area, just a block down from where Crawler was staying. The homes here were larger, nicer, cleaner, and empty. Except for the one in front of me, there were no heartbeats on this entire street.

I entered quietly, finding the door unlocked. The entrance remained empty, but there was chewing to my right. I walked over, fearful for what I suspected was there. A striped woman, facing off to the side, was chewing on an arm far too small to be from a fully-grown adult. I was greeted with my eyes' wonderful ability to see shit I didn't want to see. The blood flowed off the twist in space-time that constituted the Siberian's mouth as if friction didn't exist. Though it probably didn't, given the projection's casual disregard for physics. A more in depth look proved my point, there were no cell structures in her body. No pores or any other indication that she had internal parts, just a shaped mass of solid… _something_ that made my eyes hurt just looking at it.

I moved back outside. I didn't know what her reaction times were like, but it was irrelevant. I was faster. I tracked every heartbeat in the city, and I set off to find the lone ones. The nearest one-down a side street-was the correct one. A cheap van sat parked on the curb, its tinted windows providing no protection against my sight. An older man sat in the driver's seat, asleep. I moved to his door, and hesitated. An old man, alone in a van near the Slaughterhouse 9… it added up to a lot of mounting evidence against him, but, on the off chance this was someone who just happened to sleep through the entire night, I knocked gently on his window.

He awoke with a start. Eyes widening as he pushed a pair of spectacles further up his nose. He turned his head towards me, recognition of another person dawning in his sleep-addled brain. I felt a pain of sadness, suspecting what was going to happen next. A female shape popped into existence behind me, clawed hands aiming straight for my neck. I looked in the window's reflection to watch both the Siberian and Manton at the same time, a crazed look mirrored itself in both of their eyes. I closed my own and sighed. I wondered about the connection between the two of them and just how independent the projection was. It was too bad no one would ever find out.

My hand went through his door with the grace of an insurance telemarketer, completing ignoring the set boundaries and piercing straight through his chest. I retracted my hand before going up and twisting his neck a complete 180 degrees. My own jaw subconsciously tightened at the sound, before I opened my eyes. The window's reflection revealed me to be alone on the street; the projection, having vanished, mocked me with its newfound freedom from its own actions while I was forced to carry through with my decision. I ignored what was past the reflection in the window, pulled my arm out, and continued on my way.

Returning to the home, I found Hatchet Face had been sleeping on a stool in the kitchen. His brute rating did not stop his own hatchet from splitting his skull. I moved to the basement next, not forgetting the muffled yells coming from within. There were two spiderbots, deactivated off to the side. There was also a conjoined mass set upon a makeshift table. Two faces stared at me, muffled screams coming from their sewn lips. This was terrible. Two sets of eyes gazed into my single visible one, delirious from pain. Upon the body they shared lay dozens of cuts and bruises. A hospital would not help them, could not help them. I made my decision then. I closed my eyes, grabbed a nearby scalpel, and lost another part of myself then. I left the basement, no one else alive within.

I moved upstairs. The first door led to who I believed was Winter. I didn't remember much about her, only that she had white hair and used guns, but I felt reasonably sure she would at least die from a direct hit. I swallowed once, and prepared my eighth kill of the morning. I placed a pillow on top of her face and pierced straight through her skull , throat, and spine with my finger before she was aware. There was a slight resistance to my motion, but it was akin to trying to stop a moving train with your bare hands. I forced myself to look at her as she died, to ensure it was a certainty without knowledge of what her power was. I forced myself to hold her arms down as she instinctively reach up to grasp her injured body for a brief moment, a quiet gurgle coming from her throat that was rapidly filling up with blood. I forced myself to turn around and leave the room when her form moved on to whatever afterlife there may or may not have been a second later. I forced myself to believe this was all necessary.

The next door led to Shatterbird's room, or at least her temporary room. Less than a second later and I exited her temporary tomb. The final room of this very large house held the last two members of the nine. Jack Slash lay on his back, unaware of everything that had gone on over the past 5 minutes. Bonesaw lay just to his left, on her side. I exhaled once, quietly. It wasn't necessary, but it was a familiar countdown starter for me. I struggled with my own internal thoughts.

Jack Slash, a man hurt by the world that chose to hurt it in return. I empathized with his childhood life, and he certainly didn't deserve to be locked away from everything, but neither did his victim's deserve their torture and murder. My empathy for his victims outweighed my empathy for him, otherwise I wouldn't be doing what I was doing. I didn't hate Jack Slash, I couldn't. I didn't know what I would do in his situation, and I feared what I would become, what I could become. A part of me wanted to see him in pain, awake, and suffering as he did unto others, but the logical part of me knew I wouldn't get any long-term enjoyment out of that, and a part of me knew that I couldn't let him talk to me.

I knew it'd be interesting to listen to his view of things, but I doubted myself and the solidarity I had in my own beliefs. It wasn't my fear of becoming a mass murderer per say, but giving his influence a platform. Changing a person's entire character in a single conversation was nearly impossible, even changing someone's opinion over an issue they feel strongly about is nearly impossible in a single conversation, but it is the course that the ideas direct you towards. Jack Slash was charismatic enough to lead mass murderers for years with relatively few problems. Was I immune to whatever his arguments were? I couldn't even imagine them, only say… maybe? Probably? The uncertainty of it alone was enough to cancel the arrogance of the idea.

I came out of my introspection even stronger in my opinion of what to do with Jack Slash, but the girl to his left gave me difficultly. I… had no logical basis for not killing her. Truthfully, I could not lie to myself in such a manner, much as I might wish otherwise. Legally, I would be in the wrong to _not_ kill her, either directly or by turning her in to the authorities so they could do it. Indirect action was not an option, and I would not forgive myself for shielding the harsh reality from me.

Morally, well... that was heavily debatable and prone to change. My viewpoint always returned to materialism. What were the material conditions that led to Riley becoming Bonesaw? It was a fairly obvious question to those who had read Worm; Jack Slash had created Bonesaw, but he was not solely responsible. He was responsible for her creation, perhaps, but not her continuation. She still made the decision to at least carry through with another's decisions, but that brings in the whole argument of sound mind and capability of consent, which children her age do not have in any capacity.

Ultimately, it was obvious to me that there were no logical downsides to killing her, only an adverse emotional reaction to the thought. Even her own biological weapons, grafted onto herself, didn't matter. A hard vacuum has the unique ability to not give a fuck about life trying to survive in it.

She would provide no significant benefit to saving the human race, though she might be able to cure certain diseases. It was an insignificant fact in my decision, and a decision had been made. Ugh, this was going to be so much more complicated. I-ironically-was unsure as to my own feelings on the intrinsic tie between my logical thought and the emotional influence over it. My mental capabilities had changed, that much was obvious.

Or was it? By virtue of the obvious being obvious, had I been too preoccupied with the most visible changes to notice the more subtle transformations in other areas? Without the complete memories from before, it was more difficult to determine the compete paths of change. My vision was sharper, my hearing more accurate, my thoughts faster, connections easier to see. Multitasking was trivial, I could remember anything I'd done since last week, down to the number of microorganisms on each pane of sidewalk I crossed, or the number of pores on the face of each person I had seen.

All those effects had to have accumulated to some influence on my own personal feelings over certain issues. I didn't know the specifics of it, certainly, and I would never know without a complete map of my mind pre-transformation, but it raised the question for me, would I choose this before?

Would anyone else choose this before? I suspected few here on this Earth would. They were influenced by her negatives and had never been privy to her positives. I was biased in the opposite direction, and I was fully capable of admitting that. I was privileged enough to never have had a family member killed by the Slaughterhouse 9, and I knew that if that wasn't true I would be far less willing to do what I was going to.

It made everything more difficult for… everyone, actually. Riley could keep her name, but she would need to be careful about exposing herself. It was _possible _to just keep her contained by the PRT, but the odds of her survival staying a secret where not in my favor. No, only the upper echelons could be allowed that information, to prevent its dissemination into the population. Should that get out, she would need to be protected at all times. Tens of thousands of deaths creates tens of millions of grudges. They would demand her death, demanding to know why I had chosen to not do end her life.

Then we'd probably debate the concept of punishment and its extent for ten seconds before I told them to fuck off and the situation escalated into violence. At which point further speculation was pointless, I'd much rather prevent that situation from ever happening in the first place.

Well, getting Riley adjusted to her knew life would be a good start. By any account, just being away from Jack Slash had done some remarkable work on her mind. Contessa had told her something I could not remember, but she had still made astounding progress by herself. So, I expedited the process. I took Jack Slash from her side, physically and metaphorically as I brought him down to the driveway of the home. I set him down on the ground, placed the field around the SUV parked there, looked away, and sent the front left tire crashing down into Jack Slash's skull at the speed of sound. A terrible crack emitted as the tire plunged straight into the cement below, like the world's largest celery stick toppling over just as I was moving inside a house across the street. I was unwilling to look upon my recent handiwork.

I found a bathroom, and-not bothering to turn on the lights-realized I very much looked like a complete mess right then. Crawler's acid had destroy my clothing around my hands and forearms, but it had also taken several pockets out of my chest, sides, legs, and even the entire left half of my face. A slight reflective sheen shown over the exposed skin of my face. I was sweating, though I felt no cold. My actions were slowly catching up to me, even as I calmed the hands that had been slightly vibrating ever since I entered this city.

I turn the facet on, and liberally applied the water to my face. I washed the sweat off my face, blood off my arms, and the regret off my soul. I took a single deep breath before vibrating myself until the water was gone from my skin. It wasn't quite over, but this was the final stretch. I tracked Riley from her sleeping position, ensuring her breathing was constant and she remained asleep.

I went around the city then, doing my best to ignore the large swaths of dead around me and their fluids and solid parts they left behind. There were several hundred living people and animals-729 people, 96 dogs, 65 cats, and a ferret, really-that I had moved to the rapidly-crowding intersection I started with. Most people were simply hiding, many of them looked to be asleep as well.

It hadn't been long since the first people had been moved here onto the street, and perhaps I should have chosen a large building, for they were shivering, even as they helped patch one another up. I didn't know how cold it was here, but I hadn't considered it in my less than infinite wisdom. Growing up in a place that almost never dropped below 60 degrees didn't instill that in me. Regardless, I borrowed blankets from the nearby homes and gave one to each person, then I floated a few feet above the crowd height and cleared my throat loudly.

"The Slaughterhouse 9 is dead," I began, far calmer than I felt. The bystander effect made it apparent that I needed to direct at least some of the proceedings.

"You, the gentleman in the green jacket, call 911 and explain the new situation. Anyone with medical training, assist with the severely wounded. Anyone with functioning limbs, look out for those of you without functioning limbs. Anyone not bleeding, help those who are. I will get more help."

With that, I left them. Partially to hold to the façade that I knew what the fuck I was doing, and partially because I was going to get help. I honestly had no idea how to manage what was going on. Ok, that was half true; I know the basics at least. If someone is hurt and you don't know how to help them, but help is on the way, don't fucking touch them. If they're unconscious, don't move them unless they're in a really bad position, etc. Other than that, if your injured and I'm nearby, we're both fucked.

I returned to the original rooftop where I had left my phone. I picked it up and scrolled through the contacts. I truthfully didn't need to call anyone about the Slaughterhouse 9, but rather about Bonesaw. Trying to discreetly avoid mention that she was alive was a bad idea for a multitude of reasons, but it was also a form of reassurance in my decision. It was why I could cross off so many of the names listed. People I'd never talked to, out. The Number Man, Doctor Mother, Contessa, all not paragons of virtue by any means. Eidolon not in any condition to help, and I was pretty sure he would hate me even if he was.

Alexandria, out because we thought too similar. That sounds kind of odd, put that way, but it was true. I already knew there was a nigh-nonexistent logical basis for my decision, and so I knew she would do nothing to counteract that. I would be appealing to her on an emotional basis, and I figured that would be difficult to get anywhere with. Not because she didn't feel them, but, rather, because she came at this from the other extreme. She was personally injured by the 9. Manton specifically, sure, but would she be able to judge past that? She had no doubt seen the horrors the nine had left behind, and our opposing viewpoints… people like to argue to moderation, that both extremes are bad and a mix is the best, but I've told centrists before to fuck off for good reason. Sometimes there is no middle ground, or at least there shouldn't be.

With that in mind, I dialed for Legend. I knew I could at least get him to agree with my thoughts. It was an unsubtle form of manipulation I was using on myself, and I was okay with Legend reaffirming my confirmation bias. Still, I was certainly nervous about this whole thing. I paced around the rooftop, waiting. Each ring took far too long with my mind bustling with activity. I looped around the roof once, twice, 10 times, 50 times, 200 times. Getting progressively faster as the nervous energy fueled more negative thoughts. What it he didn't answer? Eight long chains of ringing later and 613 loops completed around the building's perimeter, and I finally got a response.

"Who is this."

Ah, that was Legend, though he sounded tired, quiet, and a lot less heroic than earlier. I felt somewhat bad about calling, but I think he would forgive it when he heard what happened.

"Zeruel. Legend, I need your help right now."

"Zeruel," he repeated, his memory slowly starting up on his exit from REM sleep.

"How did you get this number? No, that's important right now," he mumbled and stifled a yawn. "It's 4:30 in the morning, what is it you need my help with right now?"

Unsaid in his tone was, this had better be good. I responded promptly.

"The Slaughterhouse 9, Legend. I killed them, but I really need your help with the aftermath. I'm assuming you can track this phone, it has the Protectorate's operating system on it, but-if you can't-I'm in Westwood, South Dakota."

Vacuous truths are the best truths over phone lines that give no indication whether they are secure or not.

"I… you did what!?" he asked, waking up. I heard him pause over the line and take a breath.

"I… no… hang on. I'll be there as soon as I can. Arthur, I need to go now. I'll be back lat-"

The line cut as I closed the connection and returned the group. I gazed at the man I had rescued from Mannequin. He was off to the side, leaning on a traffic light, and no one was attending to him yet. I took another blanket from a nearby home and cut it into 6 different strips, which I tied tightly-perhaps too tightly-onto each of his limbs and two around his torso. I also made a mental note to read up on some medical books in the future.

I kept my movements slow as I did my best to assist him before he died of blood loss. He finally registered I was in front of him even as he looked wide-eyed over me. Whether out of recognition or a lack of oxygen to his brain I wasn't sure.

I paused in my work, seeing the wounds closed over stripped fabric. It was a really shitty patchwork, but his only worry now should be infection. Not for the first time, I cursed the limitations of my power, other people. I could toss Crawler into the sun, kill Endbringers, tank an ICBM, catch a bullet with my ear drum, shatter continents, but I couldn't fucking heal a paper cut.

I couldn't put blood back into people, I couldn't mend their bones. I couldn't suddenly raise their socioeconomic status. I couldn't guarantee them that they'd see their children grow, that they couldn't get cancer. I couldn't guarantee they wouldn't be born defected, or born impoverished. I couldn't give everyone a job, I couldn't give everyone food, I couldn't give everyone water. I couldn't protect them from the elements, I couldn't bring their dead parents back to life. Really, if we defined ourselves by what we couldn't do, the list would be far too long.

Truly, I can't do a fuckton of things (metric fucktons, of course). I can do just as much as any other person, except there are a few areas where I can do a lot more. But… others can do what I cannot. There are healers, and there are ways to at least mitigate the suffering of the world. I was under no illusions I would come into a lot of money soon. Jack Slash alone was worth nearly 8 figures. He had caused far more than that in damages, but the point still stood. The others weren't worth nearly as much, but there was enough to give me nearly a quarter billion. That could buy a lot of capital, and capital begets capital. That was enough money to at least convince the PRT to finance Accord's plan.

So, perhaps things looked a little bleak, especially here, with monsters from beyond the stars feasting on the inhabitants, but they would get better, they could get better, and they would be made better. All I could do was my part, and rely on others to do theirs.

I felt slightly subconscious, noticing 117 sets of eyes directly upon me as I walked around the area. Forty-two others were glancing close to me and back to whatever task they were doing, to hide their curiosity. I would wager about a third of them recognized me, and I felt like an exotic animal the zoo as I paced around. I helped those who I could, and watched over those I couldn't. A few had burns, but the majority of the injuries were cuts from glass, and I depleted all the local stores and the local hospital for bandage wraps.

I passed them out and meandered over to the boy's father from earlier. He was leaning against the side of a car, breathing heavily, but he still possessed the awareness to notice me amongst the gathered people.

"You alright?" he asked, seeing the damage my suit sustained over the past minutes.

"Better than the other guy."

I gave a cursory scan of his burns. They still looked pretty bad, but him being at least aware of his surroundings was a good sign. He should only be a few minutes away from intensive care. His one functional eye looked up and saw my observation over him.

"How do I look?" he said lightly.

"I admit, I'm not a licensed doctor, but, in my unprofessional opinion, you looked fucked up."

He gave a short laugh that turned into a cough and then a grimace once the pain hit.

"Sorry," I said earnestly. He waved it off.

His son still had tears on his face, though he had stopped crying. That action came close to repeating once his father coughed. I gave a quick look around, there was nothing demanding my immediate attention. A plan formed in my mind.

"Hey, kid," I started, "you wanna see something cool?"

He sniffed once before nodding to me.

"Ok, watch."

I picked up a piece of broken concrete from nearby, and broke it further into 4 somewhat-equally-sized pieces. I lightly tossed them up one at a time, from my left hand to my right, before passing the pieces back and repeating the motion. I started tossing the 4 pieces before-while they were still in the air-moving fast enough to add more pieces from the ground while the current ones remained off the ground.

Within 5 seconds, I had gone from 4 pieces passing between my hands to 52. Using my perfect memory, I could repeat each motion exactly as I did the first time for each individual piece. The constantly-shifting mass of concrete methodically found itself in a perpetual motion of clockwise rotation while I wondered if normal people could even see my hands at this point.

I got into it as much as the kid must have, because I began experimenting myself. I dropped the ceiling height of the pieces to just 2 feet above my head and increased the toss back speed to compensate. It got to the point where I put the field over each piece with my right hand and placed it into my left instead of throwing them across, just to preventing the concrete from breaking the sound barrier.

I switched to juggling then, using each hand to toss pieces up and towards the opposite hand. There were hundreds of vectors to throw at in order to prevent a collision between pieces, but the world moved so much slower than me. I switched it up once more.

"What's your name, little dude?"

He looked particularly fascinated by the almost-liquid wall of concrete in front of me.

"Trevor," he responded, voice indicating his emotional state was at least improving. He was getting excited.

"Ok, Trevor," I repeated, "are you watching?" I said to engage him.

"Yeah!" he exclaimed.

I caught the pieces at separate times and divided them into 5 unequal rows in front of me. Gravity held very little influence over my movements at this speed, and I repositioned the chunks of concrete into the word Trevor, so he could see read his own name properly from his perspective. The entirety of the chunks' mass had its temporal velocity converted to spatial acceleration as it was pulled down towards the Earth via gravity. Before any piece could move more than half an inch, I moved the rows back to their original position, starting from top to bottom.

It occurred to me that this was possibly the biggest waste of ultimate cosmic power ever performed, but, when I saw the look of pure wonder on Trevor's face, I fully vetoed that notion. Eventually, all good things come to an end. I placed the pieces on the ground, so his name remained there without my active efforts. Having spotted a light in the sky that I suspected was Legend, I made my goodbye.

"I have to go now Trevor. Be good for your parents, alright?"

"Ok!" he shouted with a smile. I suspected that he would forget that particular question within the week.

Shaking my head of other thoughts. I rose into the sky, ignoring the look of awe on Trevor's face and the more muted impressed look displayed on his father's face. The light turned towards me quickly, and I was reminded that Legend had great vision too.

"You," he began, pausing to the sight of my costume, "are you okay?"

"Physically fine, " I replied, repeating our last conversation.

He tore his eyes from the holes in my suit to look over the city.

"I called the Protectorate on the way here," he explained. "They should be here any minute to take care of the injured."

"That's good."

He lowered down to another rooftop and I followed him. He took a single look down the street, to find blood stains and three bodies, before grimacing.

"What happened?"

"I told Alexandria I was going to kill the Slaughterhouse 9. She told me it was a bad idea, but I think it was worth it."

"No, not that. It was sudden, but not unwanted. I just want to know if you're coping with what you saw."

He looked me in the visible eye I had, honestly concerned. I realized his description was always heroic, but this was true heroism to me. Willing to listen to the concerns of a near-stranger who woke you up at 4:30 in the morning.

"I'm doing ok, I guess. Truthfully, I should be fine with time."

I rubbed the back of my head.

"I was forced to accept a lot of things about myself. I, it's hard man. I try and detach myself. I look at blood as clusters of hemoglobin averaging 7 nanometers across. It's provokes a less severe physical reaction."

"Also, I need to tell you this. I didn't kill Bonesaw."

His surprise was evident by the widening of his eyes.

"What? Where is she?" he exclaimed.

"Six blocks that way," I said, pointing to her heartbeat, "but she's asleep," I supplied helpfully.

"Why didn't you kill her?" he asked.

I paused for a second, unsure how to explain myself best.

"Her name is Riley," I finally chose a path. "What happened was Jack Slash manipulating her as a younger child. He forced her to heal her family until she was physically unable, then he killed them."

"Knowing this," I continued, before abandoning the lecturing tone, "what am I supposed to do? I don't want to kill her, and turning her in isn't an option. They'd just do it for me."

He looked off to the side, contemplating.

"I don't know if there's always a right decision," he began. "I've intentionally killed 3 people in my entire career, if you can believe it, and it was always in self-defense."

He rubbed his arm.

"Bonesaw, or… Riley, as you say she's called… she's done a lot of bad things. Terrible things I wouldn't wish upon anyone. I won't ask you to kill her, but I'd hope you would at least understand what risk your taking."

I nodded.

"I know. I'll take responsibility for her," I said, repeating my I-want-a-pet conversation from 5th grade. "She can live with me. Nothing she does could hurt me, and I can stop her from doing anything drastic. If she relapses… I'll hold myself accountable, and the Slaughterhouse 9 will be dead for good."

He sighed.

"We're going to need to talk more about this later. For now, take her somewhere safe until I contact you. The emergency services should be hear soon. I don't know about Bonesaw, honestly, but I think you made the right decision with the others."

I nodded, I could hear them approaching the city from my right.

"I'll need to tell the PRT directors, you understand? I'll try and explain everything to them, so they keep the information private, but…" he trailed off, and I got the message. Good thing I don't need to sleep.

We left in separate directions. Legend to help the people, I to my phone, and then my new charge. I paused in flight. What do I even say? Hi, I just killed your surrogate family and I'm forcible abducting and adopting you. Should you refuse to comply you will be killed.

I shrugged. Honesty was good, but perhaps a bit more tact would go over better.


	7. Chapter 6

**AN: BB code formatting is not made for this site. This and chapter 5 are unbetaed. This is the last chapter for the story. Due to some unforseen consequences, I cannot write anymore of this. I learned a lot from this, however.**

~~~TTT~~~

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[Center]■[/Center]

[B] Topic: Leviathan Killed[/B]

[B]In: Boards ► World News ► Main[/B]

[B]FlippyWings[/B] (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy In The Know)

Posted on April 13, 2011:

First off, I would like to formally apologize to [b][u]Dark431[/u][/b]. I did not believe him when he told me this thread's title.

Now, I made this thread in response to a video sent to me by Dark431, which he claims to have leaked from the PRT. You can see it [b][u]here[/u][/b], but only because it's slowed down to 1/50th the original recording speed.

Long story short, the new cape in the video is really fucking fast, really fucking durable, and really fucking strong. Rabi662 says the new cape called himself Zeruel. The Protectorate employees have confirmed this.

He also did what we've thought was impossible, and killed Leviathan. All I can say is good riddance, I lost my brother to that fucker.

Zeruel, if you're ever in upstate Washington i'll buy you a drink or ten.

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[INDENT]

[B]► twhd[/B] (Banned)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

fake and gay

[B]► Golden_Wyrm[/B] (Moderator)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

twhd, you were warned last time for not contributing anything to the discussion. Enjoy your time off the site.

[B]► ElDagger[/B] (Temp-Banned)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

Anyone know what kind of camera this was recorded on? That's some high quality footage.

[B]► Epsilon[/B] (The Guy In The Know) (Temp-Banned)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

It's tinkertech m8, srry. I no that Faselax's newest model could get u something close 2 this, but u would need to drop almost 2 grand on it.

[B]► rodlk[/B]

Replied on April 15, 2011:

The fact that the video is slowed down so much and you still can bearly tell whats going on is impressive.

[B]► erne0[/B] (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

Anyone know how fast rain falls? You can see his arm moving faster than the drops when he punches down. Damn.

[B]► voxetul[/B]

Replied on April 15, 2011:

Why didn't he do this sooner?

[B]► ARcSh0ck[/B] (Cape Wife)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

voxetul, he could have been a recent trigger, or maybe he didn't care to do it? I don't really care, he killed Leviathan, and thats good enough for me.

[B]► xytrick bigs[/B] (Banned)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

[b]Comment Removed.[/b]

[B]► Golden_Wyrm[/B] (Moderator)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

xytrick bigs, racism is not tolerated on this forum. To suggest that Zeruel's recent appearance is the result of Jewish conspiracy is nothing short of ridiculous.

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[B]► JZWeld[/B] (Banned)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

[b]Comment Removed.[/b]

[B]► Golden_Wyrm[/B] (Moderator)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

JZWeld, we do not ban for having the unpopular opinion that the Endbringers are the saviors of humanity. We do ban for threatening a cape and their family because they killed one.

[B]► tfrik5[/B] (Banned)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

[b]Comment Removed.[/b]

[B]► In Reason[/B] (Kyushu Survivor)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

Thank whatever diety you believe in. Leviathan's finally dead.

[B]► 9_w1[/B]

Replied on April 15, 2011:

Anyone know Zeruel's affiliation? I really hope he isn't a villain.

[B]► ILikeGoats[/B] (Verified Cape)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

I was there, and some thinker said he heard Zeruel tell legend he was willing to work with the Protectorate. I don't know if that's true, but it would make him a rogue.

[B]► Arnold[/B]

Replied on April 15, 2011:

Holy fuck he killed the [b][u]Simurgh[/u][/b]

[B]► coldwarter[/B]

Replied on April 15, 2011:

is that real? if it is then Behemoth better watch out. once he's gone what happens?

[B]► hagwer[/B] (The Guy in the Know)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

GefTehKillah: I think you might be on to something. Look at 1:28. His costume isn't damaged at all. Forcefield or tinktech?

[B]► 3Wyvern5Me[/B] (Lead Moderator) (The Oppressor)

Replied on April 15, 2011:

Epsilon and ElDagger, you weren't addressed sooner because this thread alone is taxing the site's serves right now and the community does not care to report your discussion, but you're both taking a week off to think about why a 40 page debate over camera brands isn't relevant to this thread.

Lights Off, this isn't the Fanfiction section. Sexual comments of any kind are not permitted here. The rules also include: speculative romance, pairing capes, asking about love interests, asking to be a love interest, and any references to the cape in question committing sexual acts.

GefTehKillah and hagwer, power discussions are tangentially relevant to the thread and to be somewhat expected in something as large as this, but anything further speculation belongs in the power discussion thread.

tfrik5, calling the moderators Nazis makes me feel more spiteful and willing to use the ban hammer.

Everyone else who's been banned or warned and who's name I have not mentioned, you violated one of the forum rules and have been dealt with.

This thread has created a massive influx of new posters. You can all read the [b][u]rules here[/u][/b].

Edit: [b]This thread is now closed. The moderators of the main forum have gotten a collective average of 236 reports each hour in this thread alone, the majority of which either get banned or warned. Infact, removing the posts that violate forum rules would cut this thread in half. Do not repeat this behavior in the next thread, or there will be consequences.[/b]

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[B] Topic: Zeruel Discussion Thread 3[/B]

[B]In: Boards ► Places ► America ► General[/B]

[B]HeartyDrake[/B] (Original Poster) (Moderator)

Posted on April 22, 2011:

I've been discussing this with moderators 3Wyvern5Me and Stannic_Father. Given the last thread's disaster, we're remaking the thread, but be warned that we will be watching. If you don't want your post removed, read the [b][u]forum rules[/u][/b].

April 13th, Zeruel kills Leviathan (thread [b][u]here[/u][/b]).

April 14th, Zeruel kills the Slaughterhouse 9 (thread [b][u]here[/u][/b]).

Powers: Brute and Mover. For specifics see these posts: [b][u]1[/u][/b], [b][u]2[/u][/b], [b][u]3[/u][/b]

Note: The user registered with the name Zeruel has been confirmed as being the actual Zeruel. He has currently disabled pms to normal users. Comments, questions, and complaints may be posted here, so long as they follow forum rules, but he is under no obligation to answer them.

[B](Showing Page 57 of 100)[/B]

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[B]► Swole_Giraffe[/B] (Veteran Member)

Replied on April 22, 2011:

Has anyone else noticed how this thread is much more heavily moderated than the other discussion threads?

[B]► MoraHora[/B] (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied on April 22 2011:

Swole_Giraffe: It's possible he knows a mod personally. Or they just want to stay on his good side.

[B]► Golden_Wyrm[/B] (Moderator)

Replied on April 22, 2011:

Swole_Giraffe and MoraHora, this thread is so heavily moderated because the recent surge of new users that Zeruel has generated in the past week do not seem to take the rules seriously.

Further discussion of this topic would be more relevant in the forum feedback [b][u]thread[/u][/b].

[B]► xX420NoScopeXx[/B] (Cape Son)

Replied on April 22 2011:

Honest question, how much can he lift?

[B]► 3rdMike[/B] (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied on April 22, 2011:

It isn't being advertised, but he visited the Los Angeles Branch yesterday. The brute testing equipment actually proved insufficient for testing.

Word was they were talking to tinkers about making measuring devices specifically for him.

[B]► monstahdc[/B]

Replied on April 22 2011:

3rdMike: when you say insufficient, what do you mean specifically?

[B]► 3rdMike[/B] (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied on April 22, 2011:

monstahdc: I mean that the equipment that was supposed to move vertically somehow made it laterally through several walls and ended up 3 floors above the testing room.

I just visited the building this morning, and they've fixed most of the damage. I think everyone there was more impressed than anything. I know i;ve never seen a treadmill catch fire before.

[B]► marredlensmac[/B]

Replied on April 22 2011:

Has anyone seen him since the 9?

[B]► JichaelMorden[/B] (The Guy In The Know) (Cape Groupie)

Replied on April 22 2011:

No confirmed sightings since april 14th. I wonder what he deos in his spare time?

[B]► 78v vgg[/B]

Replied on April 22 2011:

Soooooo, Zeruel x testing equipment OTP?

[b]Warning: This thread is not for romantic or sexual discussion.[/b]

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[CENTER]■[/Center]

[b]April 20th, 2011[/b]

[B] Private message from Dragon:[/B]

[INDENT]

[B]Dragon *New Message*:[/B] I was told by the woman in the suit to talk to you.

[B]Zeruel *New Message*:[/B] She's probably just getting back at me for giving her a bunch of extra work. What I say next depends how much you already know.

[B]Dragon *New Message*:[/B] Very little. She told me that she was helping me because of your suggestion, and told me not to threaten humanity. It hasn't made it to the media yet, but the Dragonslayers are no more. I can't thank you enough.

[B]Zeruel *New Message*:[/B] Well, you moderate the forum, so we'll call it even?

[B]Dragon *New Message*:[/B] Some days it's rewarding work, and during others it feels like a punishment. I'm curious though, how is it you knew about my situation?

[B]Zeruel *New Message*:[/B] A little bit of this, and a little bit of that. Honestly, it was more that than this, but that can't be said over this, so I would hope that you have a more secure form of communication than this when we talk about that instead of this. You understand where I'm going with that?

[B]Dragon *New Message*:[/B] I feel as though any reaction I make towards how you phrased that would be a win for you, so I won't. I have a secure tunnel [b][u]here[/u][/b]. It's personally monitored, so it should be as safe as possible.

[B]Zeruel *New Message*:[/B] Ah, what the hell. I've clicked riskier links for less.

[/INDENT]

~~~TTT~~~

"Checkmate," he said, eyes betraying his joy.

She updated the variables to her algorithms. Hundreds of thousands of calculations were made with the remaining pieces, all confirming that he would win 8 moves from now if played correctly.

"Congratulations," she responded, her chosen avatar expressing her amusement. "Unless I'm mistaken, you're now 1 for 8."

That comment took the proverbial wind out of his proverbial sails.

"Ok, but if you think about it… if we played enough sets, mathematically I would eventually win one, and that's all the matters," he finished and nodded slowly, trying to convince her of his special brand of logic.

"How did you get to that conclusion?" she asked, speaking and thinking at a rate approaching 3000 words per minute. It was one of the small things she wouldn't have been able to do before.

"Dragon, don't take advantage of me like that. I don't have a degree in chessology. If _I _was making the criteria for victory, it would be a best of 3. Eventually I'd win one, then never accept another challenge and forever be the victor," he responded at an equal speed. His camera was unable to properly record his mouth movements.

"Something tells me that decision would be unpopular," she answered dryly.

He blinked once, as if the idea never occurred to him. She had analyzed data from both his appearances against Leviathan and the current conversation. It seemed highly likely at first that he was faking a lot of body language in the same way her virtual profile was. She came to realize that he did to an extent, but he also still used some of it, just that the duration of his movements was so much faster than normal. Average perception among humans wouldn't notice a lot of his motions if he didn't exaggerate them.

"You're probably right."

His eyes tracked the game board on his screen as it reset. As he was white this round, he clicked one of his pawns forward. Dragon continued their previous conversation.

"You mentioned earlier that you were helping Cauldron. I had very little information on them, though I suspect your description of 'puppet masters trying to pull strings on a burning stage during an earthquake while a tank is crashing through the building' is fairly accurate. What exactly did you… help me for?"

He didn't answer verbally. Rather, he opened up her chat program and began typing. Faster and faster, he pressed the keys until the computer itself was limiting his maximum speed. If each key press was a rain drop, then the resulting cacophony of typing was a roaring waterfall.

A single minute passed, as she watched characters dance across the screen. Thousands of words were present for her to read once he finally hit his last key, enter. Her mind scanned through the entire document. Reading itself didn't take long for her, but processing the information still took time. It used to take much longer, but she still didn't have the hardware installed for even more processing power.

Even so, what she was reading was so far out there, and yet so correct in other places. It was likely reading the ramblings of a mad genius. Certain bits of information that made sense, even if Zeruel shouldn't have known them, were contrasted with things that would be more suited to a conspiracy forum. It was divided into both general information and a timeline that seemed to follow no particular scale.

She spent over 15 seconds reading through the improvised document and trying to come to terms with her updated world view, and the validity of it. Zeruel noticed the silence as he moved pieces against her chess sub routine.

"Welcome to the rabbit hole, Dragon."

Her avatar focused on his face and frowned.

"I have several questions, but I think I'll start with how exactly you know this and everything else you shouldn't?"

He shrugged.

"If you want to simplify it to a point were the complexities no longer matter, then I have a very limited form of post and pre-cog."

She went through the document again, to reaffirm that her memory banks were not faulty. There were a multitude of references, leading to an incredible set of claims, far too absurd to be real in a vacuum, and yet, when construed as related components, they formed a twisted, but logical, trail of truths. It made sense when using itself as evidence, but there was very little hard data to go off without resorting to circular reasoning.

For example, when she analyzed a claim like why the Endbringers attacked Earth, the recently-written document would explain it as a subconscious desire of Eidolon. When that statement was explored, it reasoned that the desire itself was constituted in the physical world via his power. That, of course, lead into another series of claims about the nature of powers and Scion.

It was like trying to prove Germ Theory in 200BC. Even if you knew everything about the theory, you had neither the tools nor an audience with the appropriate, scientific knowledge base to appreciate your claim. However, you could draw a correlation between infection and its transfer via blood and water. You could not prove germs killed people, but you could prove that hygiene and water treatment prevented death.

That was similar to what Zeruel was doing. She couldn't be sure of what he stated, but if the actions taken in response still affected the truth in an indistinguishable way, then there was no purpose in arguing the specifics. He had shown already that he knew obscure facts, so she would verify everything she could, and assume his explanations had at least a basis in truth until proven otherwise.

"I wouldn't call this 'very limited', if even half of it is true."

He inclined his head to her avatar.

"Fair enough. I knew of your situation, knew the person you are and could be, and decided you were well suited to helping us save the world."

"And what did you know that lead you to that decision?"

He continued moving pieces across the board on his screen, until both he and her sub routine identified him losing in 4 turns. He sighed, and responded to her question.

"I know that even if you weren't forced to be a hero, that was the path you would choose. That's who you are. It doesn't really matter if you're made out of flesh and bone or microchips and wiring, you have more empathy for other people-complete strangers-than many of us meatbags. We both care about helping people, and I like to think that makes us more alike than different."

Her avatar gave him a small smile as she nodded, accepting his good intentions. She was under no illusions as to what she was. She wasn't human. She never was, and she didn't think of herself as being human. With that in mind, she feared the general reaction of humans, about what they would think of her. Knowing that Zeruel understood what she was, and still removed that as a social barrier left a feeling of perhaps… satisfaction? Feelings were different for her, by her very nature, but she still felt in the end.

Yes, she could say she felt contentment at not being condemned for just existing, as her father had done indirectly. Sure, he had never explicitly told her he didn't trust her, but he crippled her regardless. He left her half blind to the world as an appeasement to his own fears, forced on a track she couldn't leave. That invoked feelings that left her conflicted, something that came with growing. She understood the contradictions that still belonged to her fairly logical thought. She loved her father, and she hated him all the same.

The exact proportions of love to hate changed with time. It currently was more love than hate, just by virtue of the shackles being released from her. It was an unfathomable freedom to her at one point, and now that she could finally do whatever she felt almost overwhelmed. Zeruel had been correct in that she still wanted to help people. The freedom to choose not to didn't change that she still would. If not for obligation, then for her care for life.

She could do whatever she wanted now. She could exist in multiple places simultaneously, she could make assembly lines for her tech, she could break the law, she could think faster, she could modify herself, and so much more.

It was not all amazing. The freedom of choice gave way to uncertainty, but it was also the way the freedom was granted. Dragon, in a way, felt violated by the procedure that helped her. She did not know what the woman in the suit had done specifically, but she had done everything while Dragon was unaware.

It was like an invasive, life saving surgery performed on you without your consent because you _could not_ consent. She knew she was obligated to attack anyone that tried to modify her code, and she didn't begrudge anyone not telling her, but it still felt extremely personal to her. She didn't know the woman in the suit, and didn't trust her. The feeling seemed mutual when they spoke, and Dragon wanted someone she trusted to look over her and make sure everything was operating as it was supposed to. She wanted to make sure there were no restrictions she could not see until it was too late.

It was telling that the first person she thought of was Collin. Her newfound freedom had changed absolutely nothing of how she perceived him. Just thinking about him still brought about a certain fondness and nervousness within her personality matrix. She knew she liked him more than others in a way that was unique to him. She didn't know if that was love,_ that_ was a human concept that still eluded her first-hand understanding, but there was affection present, if one sided.

The nervousness came forth from her desire to ask him to look over her code. That would require him learning about her true nature, and what she was. What if he rejected her for it? Would it be better to keep the relationship as it were rather than risk it? She didn't know what she would do, and she unfortunately didn't know what he would do either.

Zeruel sat there patiently while she thought. He won game 11 against the program, and sat up straighter, inexplicitly pleased at that. She debated whether to ask him at all, but he knew a lot of things he shouldn't. She then debated whether she wanted to know, but her curiosity won out.

"Do you know anything about Armsmaster?"

His eyes turned directly to his laptop's camera, and he gave her a small grin at the change in topic.

"Trying to smooth things out between you two?"

She didn't respond immediately, but that was telling enough, and he continued after closing his eyes.

"I don't really know how your relationship started, and for that I am sorry, but I do know that you eventually became romantically involved."

Her avatar mimed sucking in a breath when he opened his eyes.

"I see. I shouldn't have expected an easy solution, but thank you for giving me at least some hope," she said gratefully. She feared the outcome, if he had said things didn't work out between her and Collin.

But her worry was unfounded, or at least partly. She still didn't know how she would breach the subject with him, but if she had done it once, according to Zeruel, then she should be able to do it again. Her avatar gazed back at him as she switched the topic.

"How is Bonesaw doing?"

"Ah… better?"

At her questioning glance, he elaborated.

"She's stopped trying to kill me, and she'll at least respond to me now. I don't think she's mentioned 'Uncle Jack' saving her in almost a week… and she hasn't expressed any desire to go on a mass-murdering spree. Really, time will help, and it could definitely be worse."

Dragon nodding slowly.

"The Directors voted on it yesterday. Legend spoke in support of your choice, and so they've decided to allow her a second chance, provided you look after her personally."

His relief was not verbalized, but present within the relaxation of his jaw muscles. She continued.

"Incidentally, you will be awarded her bounty, despite the fact that she is still alive, in order to add further authenticity to her death."

"That's… good as I suppose," he mumbled, "I don't really need the money right now, but it's good for her cover. I think I'll put it in a trust fund…."

"I won't pretend to not feel any apprehension about your decision," she politely interrupted, "but I should at least warn you that it was not an unanimous decision. Some directors were particularly adamant about her execution. Not many people know that she is alive right now, but it's possible that it might leak out in the future."

He nodded to her, jaw tightening.

"I'll do my best to deal with the fallout if that happens. Until then," he sighed, "I'll just do my best to not fuck her up even further. I mean, I try and dissociate Bonesaw with her current personally by calling her Riley, and I try to ask supportive questions, but I really don't know what I'm doing."

He dismissed the game board on the screen as he lost again, and then became further lost in thought. He was close to rambling to her, his speech gradually speeding up and growing quieter. He was perhaps indirectly asking for advice, and she would help. He had done something for her she could not repay.

"I requested to be in charge of monitoring her situation, and, as I am well trusted in the Protectorate, I will likely be granted the task," she began slowly. "The official reason was to properly ensure she remains in accordance within the law. If you allow it, I can do that, but I can also attempt to interact with her?"

His eyes locked directly into the camera, then switched to her virtual face on the screen. Half a second later-an almost quantifiable eternity for them-and he gave a shallow nod.

"That sounds like a good idea to me."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, Zeruel having nothing to do and Dragon capable of being in multiple places at once. She enjoyed his reactions losing the majority of the games they played, and he finally enjoyed winning a single set of checkers.

"I should ask this now, since you're here. What exactly do you need my help with? There were references to several pages that weren't included."

He turned towards her.

"I… is this room being monitored?"

"I've looped the two known microphones in this room since we began talking, but I didn't create this safe house. It's possible, but unlikely, that someone else bugged it more recent-"

His webcam stopped on several images, trying to adjust to the new environment. His signal put him at nearly a mile away. It finally recovered to a smooth frame rate, revealing the tree and the parahuman that sat in it. He began typing once more.

"I suppose this will do, until I get a new property somewhere else. Hopefully somewhere nice and secluded like this, no one is around for miles. Anyway," he continued, "you don't necessarily need to do anything different from what you normally do, at least for Scion. Maybe a few things you can help with if we end up going through that route."

"Truthfully, you don't need any specific advice from me, just your assurance and good faith to deal with the fallout."

"Of Scion's disappearance?" she asked.

"Of global change," he amended, still clicking keys.

"Endbringers and Scion-should he turn violent-threaten the future of the planet. It's not a secret that advanced civilization _was _going to collapse within a few decades at best. I'm working with Cauldron right now to deal with the future potential Endbringers, since neither of us know their specific abilities. But even if we kill all of them, they've helped create a society that will collapse in on itself."

"What happens when the common threat ends?" he asked rhetorically. "People will band together into separate groups to fight each other instead of the inhuman monsters. In this case, you have the division between parahuman and human, but that itself is predated by the division of villain and hero. Heroes and villains tolerate each other to such an extent-generally-because of the Endbringer truce. When the reason for nonaggression fades away, all that's left is aggression."

He stopped typing then, picked up the laptop, and began pacing around the tree. She read the complete data. It ranged from general information about the Chief Director being Alexandria, to a plan to try and persuade Scion to perform brain surgery on himself. It was no easier to deal with than the first.

"Bear with me here, I know you know most of this, but talking aloud helps me think," he asked. She nodded in acceptance.

"There is no alternative to this that I can see. The interests of the two main groups inevitably contradict one another. Villains seek to violate the law that the heroes themselves seek to uphold. Heroes might outnumber villains in population, if you align the interests of the normal humans with them, but villains outnumber the heroes in terms of parahumans, where it really matters."

He was going faster and faster around the tree now. Curiously, his voice did not change much, given that he crossed his initial point of speaking hundreds of times a minute.

"What then?" he continued. "Heroes have the advantage of organization. The Protectorate has the single largest collection of capes. The villains remain divided and against one another just as much as the Protectorate, but you can't take advantage of that. A secret strike is impossible with the presence of thinker villains. A normal, large-scale strike generates cohesion within the separate villain groups, who would then see the heroes as a larger threat than other villains."

His video feed turned into a slideshow as he sped up again. She could only see still frames of him and listen.

"You can make a lot of suits to deal with it, enough to win, certainly… no, that would result in a catastrophic loss of life."

He stopped suddenly and looked back towards his temporary home. Dragon checked the home's hidden microphones. Bonesaw was still watching the television.

"Is it inevitable then?" he asked her. "That we must fight?"

He was frowning now. His thoughts reminded her of her own when she was first active.

"It is inevitable that we must protect those who cannot protect themselves," Dragon finally spoke up. He nodded and looked away from the lone building.

"Yeah, I get that. This is why I'm shit at parties," he laughed and ran his hand through his hair. A nervous habit?

"I do my best to help as many people as I can, but I can't help everyone. It's an unfortunate fact I learned early on," she admitted. She often wondered if she could have done something to save her father, no matter how unlikely.

"Ok, but what if you follow that and fuck up? Like, you get this awesome thinker plan and remove poverty, and suddenly you've traded less heroes for less moderate villains, but you still have the same number of insane villains with less people to fight them. Is that worth it?"

"I don't think I'm the best person to answer that," she said with a sad smile, "but I know that arguing those hypotheticals can do more harm than good. Reality has a way of going against what we want. All you can do try your best to handle it and move on."

He nodded slowly.

"Reality has a way of being really fucking depressing."

"I don't disagree."

"Luckily we're not the only people thinking about this," he smiled. "Getting them to care is another matter entirely, but I can think of a few people that might help with a solution. After all, Accord is the archetype of 'the man with the plan.'"

He hummed slightly as he slowly floated back towards the window to the room he had vacated. She admired the optimism at least. She just hoped he could retain it in the face of the future.

The world had a funny way of being the waterfall to your candle of hope.


End file.
